Spira's Dream
by M'jai
Summary: A re-upload of my first fanfiction, written five years ago. Tidus returns to Spira, but questions about how remain. Is he real this time? Or is something else going on with the secrets that Spira continues to hold?
1. Chapter 1: Homecoming

**Spira's Dream**

_Final Fantasy X2_ transcript translated/retold by M'jai; Original content written by M'jai

Written 7/2005

Re-uploaded and revised 31 May 2010

))((

Disclaimer:

The setting, characters, and inspiration for the plot all belong to Square Enix. Some dialog is taken from game clips of _Final Fantasy X2_. Fans of the game will recognize which content is not mine, so I do not even pretend to take credit for it. My appreciation goes out to Square Enix and their wonderful game designers for giving us such inspiring entertainment.

Scenes retold from the movie clips are mostly my own translations of the Japanese game. So if my version doesn't match your version, ... that's why.

Any resemblance between my fan-fic and other FFX2 fan-fics is purely unintentional. We are all playing the same game, after all, so it's pretty easy to draw some similar theories out of it. Hopefully, it will pack a few new surprises, though.

))((

Chapter 1: Homecoming

"Are you real?" Yuna asked as she hugged Tidus tightly to her.

"Maybe," he answered softly with uncertainty.

Yuna reluctantly released her hold on his back and neck and stepped back to survey him. Hesitantly, she placed her palms against his chest and lightly pressed. He was solid. She did not pass through him this time. His clothing was cold and wet, but his skin was warm and already beginning to dry a bit. He seemed real enough, however, she had been fooled once before by his surreal existence, ... and so had he. She so badly wanted to believe that this was real.

"Do I pass?" His brows rose with a measure of anxiety. He couldn't trust his own senses to know whether he was alive or not. Was he transparent still? Did he even look like himself anymore? He couldn't tell if she was disappointed with what she saw. The memory of fading from reality was still too fresh to take anything for granted.

"Mh." Yuna nodded with smile of approval. "You're back."

"I'm home." A wave of emotion overwhelmed him, as he pulled her to his chest, wrapping one arm over her shoulders and the other around her waist. "I'm home!" he repeated with a broken voice. Burying his face into the base of her neck, he hugged her tightly again for a long moment and struggled to control the moisture in his eyes. Having been ridiculed by his dad for being a crybaby when he was younger, he refused to let anyone see tears now, even if they were tears of joy.

Yuna closed her eyes and allowed herself to be wholly engulfed in his embrace. She lifted her arms to wrap around his torso with a sigh of relief, also allowing herself to believe once more. "Welcome home."

Rikku and Paine grinned to each other from where they stood on the landing ramp watching the couple's mysterious, but long-awaited reunion.

"Hey! Please, some other place, gah!" Wakka yelled from the beach in mock disgust.

Tidus and Yuna looked up from their solitary embrace to see that the entire island of Besaid had joined them. Yuna was amazed at the sight, but it gave Tidus the excuse he needed to blink away any remnants of moisture and smile again.

"Yo!" Wakka called out again with a grin and a wave.

"Don't bother me, I'm telling ya!" Tidus gestured for him to go away if he didn't want to see.

"Uh?" Wakka spread his arms in mock confusion and looked over his shoulder at Lulu with a chuckle.

Lulu cradled baby Vidina in her arms and flashed a wane smile to Wakka for his teasing, as if he deserved the curt response.

"Oi!" Rikku called back from the ship's ramp and waved to them.

"Mh." Tidus took Yuna's hand, urging her to jog with him toward the shore from the sandbar in the water where they stood beneath the airship. As she splashed in the water behind him, Yuna allowed her relief to melt into unbridled happiness, and she soon took the lead.

"Oh! Uhwa!" Tidus mildly complained with a laugh, as he stumbled keeping up with her. He was surprised at the normally shy girl's boldness. "I see you've changed!"

"Well, because a lot has happened!" she told him above the noise of their splashing. Now, it was her turn to fight the overwhelming emotion.

"I want to hear about it!" he answered with excitement.

"Well, for starters, I found a sphere of you," she started to explain, but a lump formed in her throat, and her eyes began to burn with moisture. "At least, ... I thought it was you." She stopped on the water's edge, and turned to face him once more. All her hard work to try and find him, all those hopes lost on Shuyin, all those times she had wished he were with her made her unable to hold back the tears any longer. She felt silly for crying now. "I'm so happy that you're back. I really am. It's just that ... I've missed you so much." Apologetically, she lifted a finger to wipe her eyes.

Tidus, understanding exactly how she felt, pulled her head to his shoulder to shield her from the crowd running their way. This was still their private moment, however brief.

Yuna squeezed her eyes shut, clearing them of the remaining moisture. Then, she straightened with a sniffle and wiped her lashes once more before turning to smile at the oncoming throng. The crowd cheered their return and welcomed them with hugs as they circled around them.

Rikku and Paine jumped from the landing ramp into the water to run to the shore behind them.

"Who do you think you are just popping in on us out of nowhere, ya?" Wakka scolded Tidus by hooking a strong arm around his neck and giving his unruly, wet head a knuckle scrub. "Where you been the last two years?"

Tidus laughed and pulled away from his hold in time to receive a gentle hug from Lulu. "Two years?" He was stunned. Had it been that long? "I ... It's kind of hard to say." That's when he noticed the baby in her arms with stark red hair. Shocked, but not needing any further explanation, he looked to Wakka. "So, this is why you wanted to retire from blitzball?"

"Hey, now. That's the future star player of the Besaid Auroch's you're looking at, ya?" Wakka proudly grinned. He turned to Yuna. "Sorry we couldn't make it to Luca to hear everyone's speeches about what happened, but we got word through the Youth League that the machina had been defeated. Let's have a big bonfire tonight in the village, so everyone can welcome _Yuna_ home!" he suggested to the crowd, giving Tidus a sly glance that made him chuckle. A cheer of agreement went up from the crowd. "Meanwhile, you come dry off at our place and give us the scoop on what's been happening."

Lulu greeted Yuna with a hug and a smile, careful not to bump the sleeping baby in her arms. "So, it _was_ him - that sphere you showed me."

"No. But it led me to him all the same."

The crowd that had gathered began to move away from the shore back toward the village. Tidus took Yuna's hand as they followed.

"The rest of the crew will be coming later." Rikku hopped on one foot trying to pull off a sneaker and pour out some ocean water.

"Brother's being an idiot right now and everyone's having to calm him down," Paine explained.

Yuna stopped for a moment with mild concern.

"That's nothing for you to be worried about." Rikku pushed her shoulders forward, encouraging her to keep walking. "Someone else needs your attention now."

"Nothing like having a rival appear on the scene when you thought you had the playing field all to yourself." Paine smirked.

Yuna remembered the conversation between Brother and Barkeep the hypello she had accidentally overheard in the cabin once. Brother had confessed to Barkeep that he loved Yuna, but he had never directly spoken to her about it. "I didn't mean for him to feel -"

"Just ignore him. He'll get over it." Rikku continued pushing Yuna forward, rather than allowing her to spoil the fun of the moment by returning to the ship to check on their self-proclaimed, pouting leader.

Yuna found herself and Tidus swept along with the well-wishers down the road to the village. Once there, everyone scattered to their homes to begin the final preparations for the celebration. Wakka and Lulu led the way to their tiny hut just in front of the Besaid temple. It was warmed by the sun, scented with fresh fruit, and cooled with a gentle tropical breeze - a cozy little place for the new family and their guests to escape the public eye for a moment. Yuna removed her water-logged boots and set them by the door next to everyone else's upon entering.

Lulu placed the baby on the bed and surrounded him with pillows to keep him from rolling off as she unwrapped him from his blanket pod. He was just beginning to wake, and his little face pinched into a very big yawn as he stretched, kicked, and blinked his eyes. "Wakka, why don't you get the boy a towel and some clothes so he can dry off."

"You're already changing his diaper, ya?" Wakka scratched his head.

She gave him a flat expression. "I was referring to Tidus."

"Oh, so!" Wakka gave a laugh at his own misunderstanding and went to the dresser to find a dry change of clothing. "Say, how'd you get back to here, anyway? I know you're a good blitzer and all, but don't tell me you've been holding your breath under water that long. Here, put these on." He tossed the clothing to Tidus's chest. "We can't have you running around _nekkid_, ya?"

"Though there's those among us who might not think that's such a bad thing. Right, Yunie?" Rikku winked and nudged Yuna.

Yuna's blue and green eyes widened slightly, and she felt her face suddenly warm. Her hand went to her cheek hoping no one saw her blush.

Tidus opened his mouth to answer Rikku, but Wakka intercepted the inevitably egotistical remark by turning him toward the screen. "Well, none of the rest of us are _that_ glad to see him."

"You're just jealous because you've gotten tubby since retiring from blitzball." The petite, strawberry-blond thief poked a finger into the large man's slightly expanding waistline.

"That's _extra presence_ I told ya," Wakka insisted.

Yuna laughed lightly to cover her embarrassment, as her eyes followed Tidus to the screen, but then she turned her attention to the baby on the bed.

Lulu sighed and shook her head at the exchange between Rikku and Wakka as she lifted the newly-changed baby onto her lap. "So, are you going to tell us what happened, or are you going to make us wait until the bonfire, along with the rest of the village?" She sat down on the edge of the bed next to Yuna.

"You mean with Vegnagun?"

"That and his reappearance."

Paine made her way to the small sofa behind the tea table and sat down.

"Vegnagun has been destroyed," Yuna announced.

"Yeah, we kicked its butt!" Rikku demonstrated with a karate kick.

"Down, girl." Paine grabbed the back of Rikku's shorts and pulled her down to sit beside her before she accidentally kicked something valuable in the small hut.

"Shuyin is resting now," Yuna thoughtfully added. "And Vegnagun shouldn't be a problem to Spira anymore."

"What's a ... Vegnagun?" Tidus asked from behind the screen as he found a towel to dry himself and exchanged his yellow shirt for a white, sleeveless one with bold tribal designs that laced over the chest. He didn't bother with lacing it though.

"It was a giant weapon created during the Machina War." Paine leaned back and crossed her legs. "But since it proved unreliable in being able to distinguish between friend and foe, it was hidden under Bevelle. Shuyin was going to destroy Spira with it. It was his answer to purging hatred from the world."

"Sounds like Maester Seymour's method of solving Spira's problems - killing everyone in order to restore peace." Tidus draped the fluffy towel over his damp head and shoulders and left it there as he continued to change the rest of his clothing.

"Maester Seymour probably had some influence on his final plans," Yuna quietly agreed, thinking of the sphere they had found in which Baralai was asking the Maester to hide him. Those spheres somehow left more questions with Yuna than answers.

"Shuyin even tainted the aeons with his hatred, and they brought fiends into the temples. It was awful!" Rikku exclaimed. "But YuRiPa kicked their butts. Yep, yep, yep!" She grinned.

"YuRiPa?" Tidus looked up as he pulled on the matching white shorts. He picked up his wet clothing and came from behind the screen.

"Us," Paine translated.

"Oh. Who's Shuyin?"

"He's the one in the sphere - the one that I thought was you," Yuna explained.

"He looks like me?"

"Uncannily so," Lulu agreed, having seen the sphere herself earlier. "And what about you? What's your story? How did you manage to come back?"

"I ... don't know," Tidus admitted with a shrug. "I just woke up and found myself in the ocean."

Lulu stood and passed the baby to Yuna. Then, she took the wet clothing from Tidus to hang on a small bamboo rack in the sunny breeze by the door. "Are you real this time?"

Tidus looked to Yuna with uncertainty. Even if he had passed her inspection, the truth of the matter was that he still didn't know.

"He must be real this time," Yuna answered as she lightly bounced the baby on her knee. "When Vegnagun was destroyed, as I was leaving the Farplane, I heard a whistle. The spirit of Bahamut appeared and thanked me. He asked if I heard it, so I knew I wasn't imagining things, and then he asked me if ... I wanted to walk with you again." She looked from the red-headed baby to the blond young man peering at her from under the towel.

"And you told him no, but he dumped me on you anyway," he playfully guessed. "Sucks to be you, huh?"

She couldn't help but be amused. It was nice to have his familiar humor back. As he removed the towel from his head to his shoulders, her breath caught for a moment. The white, island attire he had changed into contrasted beautifully against his sun-kissed skin and brought out the white highlights that streaked his mopish, golden hair. She had always been attracted to his flirtatious disposition and boyish good looks, but seeing him in this new attire made her forget what she was talking about for a moment. Forcing herself to look away, Yuna cleared her throat in mild embarrassment at her own reaction and hoped no one else noticed. She retraced her words to remember what she was going to say next. "He promised me they would do what they could."

"So, you're really here," Rikku concluded.

"Just like he promised," Yuna added with a broad, happy smile.

"But if the fayth brought him back, that would make him a dream again, wouldn't it?" Lulu arranged the wet shoes in the sun by the door, and then moved to stand before Tidus to inspect him closely. Nothing slipped past her intelligent, crimson eyes.

"Cut it out, Lu," Wakka complained. "You're raining on everyone's parade bringing this up. Who cares if he's real or not. He's here, ain't he?"

"I'm sorry. It's not my intent to put you on the spot about your existence," she apologized to Tidus. "We're all very glad to see you again. It's just that when we killed the aeons after defeating Sin, I thought we had also ended their dream. That's why you faded," she stated the obvious. "It's a bit unsettling to know that they might still be dreaming again, because that was the whole reason for sending them - to end their eternal summoning. It was the only way to prevent Yu Yevon from coming back with a new Sin. If they were sent, how could they bring you back? For that matter, how was Shuyin able to bring them back and poison them with hate? If the aeons, the fayth, and their dream have returned, will Sin also return?"

"It's okay, Lu." Tidus continued to dry his hair with the towel. "I understand your concern. I wish I could give you answers, but I don't know them. After I faded, I'm not sure what happened, but I saw my dad, along with Auron and Lord Braska. It was like they never left Zanarkand." He hung the towel over the divided screen and looked toward Yuna, who looked surprised to hear of his meeting with her deceased father. Tidus moved to the chair beside the sofa where Rikku and Paine sat. He lowered himself into it and ran his fingers through his shaggy, damp hair to half-heartedly comb it. "They congratulated me for destroying Sin - for freeing my old man. Not so much in words, but I could feel it."

"Lord Braska and Auron were real people. Are you saying that you saw them in the dream, or in the Farplane?" Lulu gently reminded him of the differences between the world he came from and reality.

"I don't know." Tidus felt frustrated that it was the only answer he seemed to be able to give. "When Sin first brought me here, I thought I had time-traveled into the future, or something - the way everyone was talking about Zanarkand being in ruins for a thousand years. But this time, I don't remember going back. Sin destroyed the dream Zanarkand that night, so I don't know if there would be anything left to go back to, even if I could."

Lulu placed a hand on his shoulder to let him know that she had not meant for her questions to upset him.

"Actually, we all thought you was a little touched in the head after getting too close to Sin." Wakka bluntly interrupted and twirled a finger at his temple.

Tidus chuckled at the memory, knowing it was Wakka's way of trying to lighten the mood a little.

"So, you're saying you're from a dream created by the fayth over a thousand years ago, when Zanarkand was still alive?" Paine didn't quite know what to make of this conversation.

Tidus lifted his chin to meet the gaze of Yuna's newest friend. She sported short, silver-gray hair and had crimson eyes that reminded him of Lulu, more because of the quiet intelligence they seemed to be veiling than the color. He didn't know anything about her, not even her name, but he nodded reluctantly at her assessment of his former situation.

"That's one heck of a dream." The woman's black leather armor crinkled lightly as she leaned forward, intrigued by how real he seemed to be.

Rikku dropped her chin into her hands and placed her elbows on her knees. "Aw, come on you guys. You're making him feel bad. There's nothing he can do about where he came from or what he is. We should just be glad he was able to come back." She pouted for a moment. "I'm with Yunie on this one. Who cares whether he's real or not. He's back and that's all that matters."

"It's okay." Tidus sighed and stood. "I understand Lu's concerns. To be honest, I wish I knew for sure. But I didn't even know the truth about myself last time, until they told me."

"Well, perhaps there is a way to find out earlier this time," Lulu suggested. All eyes turned toward her as everyone waited to hear what she knew that they did not. "Return to the Farplane and ask."

The shoulder length part of Yuna's mouse-brown hair made a soft swishing sound in her ears as she firmly shook her head. "No."

"The guado have returned to Guadosalam. They can probably offer their help in assuring his safety if you use their portal. It may be the only way to test whether he has become real, or if he is still part of the dream." Lulu moved to Yuna's side and reached for her baby. Her long, black braids spilled over one shoulder until she straightened and placed Vidina on the other.

"I don't care," Yuna protested. "What if something happens to him, so that he can't come back again? Taking him to the Farplane to see if he disappears again is not a risk worth taking. He should be allowed to stay forever this time, if he wants to." The young summoner stood and paced to the door, folding her arms at her chest as she allowed the island breeze to cool her anger. Why were they even discussing this so soon after his return?

Tidus approached her from behind and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Yuna, ... nothing lasts forever - not even in your reality. Whether I'm real or not, all we have is the time between here and there. That's all anyone ever has," he spoke softly. "Lu's right. If there's a way to do it, I should try to find out the truth about who I am now - for your sake, as well as mine."

Yuna didn't seem convinced. She stared through the crack in the door curtains at the lighting of the bonfire in the center of the village, watching the smoke and ash rise into the air like charred pyreflies. By sunset the flames would be as big as the summoning circle itself.

Tidus gave the matter some more thought and leaned against the door post. "After I faded, every now and then, I would get this feeling that you were reaching out for me. So, I'd whistle hoping you'd hear me."

"When I was lost in the Farplane, I followed your whistle to find the way out. I could swear that I saw you," she related.

"There. You see? We're connected." He perked up a little. "I'll always be with you in one way or another." When she didn't respond, his smile faded. "Wouldn't you want to know the truth, if you were me?"

As much as she hated to admit it, she realized she would. Though it had not been a full decade yet, his return could somehow mean the end of what they thought would be an Eternal Calm. The gentle, island breeze suddenly felt cold to her. Why did doing the right thing always hurt so much? "Sphere hunters search all over Spira hunting for clues to the truth about Spira's past because, as a people, we don't know very much of our own history." She chilled and turned around to face him, searching his azure eyes for reassurance. "If it's what you really want, then we'll go to Guadosalam and ask to use their portal," she quietly agreed to the idea. "But if any part of you starts to fade, we leave immediately," she insisted.

Tidus smiled at her firmness. "Yes, ma'am."

"Woohoo! We can go to Guadosalam tomorrow morning, first thing," Rikku eagerly offered and stood to do a little dance.

Tidus waved his hands. "No! Uh, Rikku, no offense, but ... it's been two years since I left. I want to see what I've missed. If all I have is the time between now and then, I'd like 'then' to last a little more than a day. Maybe you could take us island hopping, but then allow us to go on foot from the Mi'ihen High Road. Would that be all right?"

"Sure! Can we come with you?" She hopped to Tidus's side.

"Rikku." Paine frowned slightly at the younger girl for not minding her own business.

"Well, he's my friend, too, you know. Yunie's not the only one that missed him." Rikku defended her rudeness with a pout.

Yuna was touched by Rikku's unexpected plea. She looked to Wakka and Lulu. They had been a tightly knit group on the pilgrimage to defeat Sin - the summoner and her guardians. These were the people who were willing to die to protect her until she could accomplish her goal at the final summoning. As much as she felt the urge to keep him to herself, she knew she had no right. "I would be honored to have my friends accompany us and make sure we get there safely, ... making memories along the way, like we did before." Yuna glanced at Tidus to be sure it was okay with him.

He shrugged with an easy-going smile. "It's okay with me." He punctuated his decision by elbowing Rikku aside as if she were a pest for asking.

Rikku giggled and bumped him right back, nearly knocking him into Yuna.

Wakka smiled to himself at their light interaction. He had been quiet during most of the conversation. He felt as if he had lost two little brothers sometimes when he considered how the Farplane had claimed both Tidus and Chappu. It was good, however momentary, to have his little buddy back. "Great. Now that all that is settled, and Lu is done popping everyone's balloons, maybe we can have a celebration around here, ya?" He clapped his strong hands together and rubbed them, ready for some food and fun.

"Right," Lulu agreed with a smile, again offering a slight nod of her head in apology to Tidus and Yuna for being, perhaps, overly concerned about extenuating circumstances. "What are your favorite foods? I'll fix them tonight for the festivities."

Rikku suddenly had visions of a table full of desserts. "Oooh, how about some palm fruit pies and some berry swirlies and some -"

"She's not asking you. You'd eat her out of house and home." Paine interrupted Rikku's wish list and stood to approach Tidus. "I'm Paine. It's nice to finally meet you. I'll go see what's keeping the rest of the crew and tell them the travel plans. Just be warned about Brother."

"Brother?" He side-stepped to let her pass.

Rikku leaned back, clasping her hands behind her head in a stretch. "He's probably still pouting that you've returned because he's got this really big crush on Yunie."

"In a jealous fit, he's more likely to hurt himself than you, trust me. But we don't want him to pounce you without warning." Paine smirked lightly, then bowed to Lulu and Wakka in excusing herself from their small home.

Tidus blinked at the mild threat. He remembered Rikku's big brother. ''But, ... isn't he your cousin?"

Yuna nodded with light embarrassment.

"Okay, ew.'" Tidus made a face. "He needs to get out more often."

"Come on you." Wakka stood and hooked an arm around Tidus's neck again. "I gotta borrow him a few minutes to say hello to the guys on the team," he explained in half-apology to Yuna before dragging Tidus outside.

Once outside, though Wakka was twice his size, Tidus managed to escape his hold to jog toward the blitzball team's hut on his own. "Hey! How about a game on the beach, Tubby? You up to it?" he challenged over his shoulder.

Wakka stopped in his tracks and shook a fist toward Tidus. "Who you calling Tubby? You just bring it on, ya! I've changed diapers that look better than your score sheets!"


	2. Chapter 2: Rivalry

Chapter 2: Rivalry

That afternoon at the bonfire festivities, the children of the village begged Yuna to tell them what happened in the Farplane during the attempt to disassemble Vegnagun. As children and adults alike sat down in a circle around her, she found herself the center of their undivided attention.

Tidus sat down among the gathering next to Wakka and watched Yuna's face light up with expression and emotion as she filled the role of village storyteller to relate the events of the Gullwings most recent mission. This was no longer the shy, child-like girl who grew up sheltered by the temple with an unshakable faith in Yevon. Yuna had faced great trials and found great courage in her travels. She now had a greater sense of who she could be.

Vidina started to cry at a high point in her story, so Wakka accepted the baby from Lulu and lay on his back to "fly" him through the air. It worked to pacify the fussy baby, and allowed everyone else to keep listening to the soft-spoken high summoner. Rikku grinned and quietly moved close to allow the baby boy to grab onto her fingers, just in time for Vidina to spit-up on Wakka's chest. "Aw, maan," he complained in a hushed voice and frowned at Rikku. "What'd you make him do that for?" He passed the baby to the small thief and got up to go change his shirt.

Rikku held Vidina at arm's length and looked to Lulu with an apologetic wince, not knowing what to do with such a young baby.

Lulu gave her a smile that reached her eyes and passed Rikku a cloth.

Yuna saw these quiet events in the background, and her heart warmed with happiness at being reunited with her friends. It comforted her to know everyone was here, including _him_. She continued by further explaining the tale of Shuyin and Lenne, so that their memory could continue to live on with future generations. As she spoke of Shuyin, her eyes drifted to Tidus, and she remembered the strange mix of loneliness and crushing disappointment she had felt upon realizing the person she'd found wasn't him. She could put all of that behind her now. She had failed her mission to find him using the spheres; but he had been able to find his way back to her in spite of it. That made his return more meaningful than if she had succeeded.

After the storytelling, the food was brought outside of everyone's huts for a shared meal. Then, Wakka took on Tidus's challenge and gathered the team for a blitzball game on the beach, for old time's sake. Though the sun was still visible on the horizon, they lit bamboo torches and paper lamps around the perimeter of the beach, so they could continue to play into the night.

"Land or water?" Tidus volleyed the ball a few times while they were determining their boundaries.

Wakka gave the younger player's stature a studious glance and lightly patted his own stomach. "_Land_. See, I think you've been holding out on us, training in the ocean for two years, ya?"

Tidus laughed at Wakka's absurd theory. "No, I haven't."

Nearby, Yuna and her friends were humored at Wakka's accusations. "Not even Tidus could hold his breath for that long, Wakka."

"All right, we got some bare feet out here, so that means no shoes come into play! We'll play teams by rounds! Anyone else want in on first round?" he called to the gathering of spectators scattered around the beach. "Yuna, you want to be on his team for first round?"

Tidus blinked and stopped volleying the ball. "Eh?"

"Gullwings had to take the place for the Aurochs in the exhibition games and a few league games at the first of the season. Yuna did pretty good, if I do say so," Wakka explained.

Tidus blinked again at Yuna. "_You_ played blitzball?"

"Careful, we might have to hurt you if that sounds like doubt," Paine lightly threatened.

Wakka gave a low chuckle. "You know, ladies, I don't think he believes me. If he doesn't want you on his team, I'd be happy to have you on mine."

"I'll play!" Rikku agreed.

Paine folded her arms over her chest and nodded in acceptance of the challenge.

Rikku elbowed Yuna. "Come on, Yunie. It'll be fun."

Yuna giggled lightly to herself. "Mmmh, ... okay."

Tidus decided to humor them. "Okay. I won't hold back, though."

"Neither will we," Yuna answered.

Her tart response led him to quirk a brow of surprise. "Who _are_ you and what did you do with Yuna?"

"Is that a complaint?" She clasped her hands behind her back and rocked onto her toes as she stared up at him with inquiry designed to put him on the spot.

"N-no. I just -"

"Good!" She smiled and turned her back to him to consult her teammates.

"All right, let's get this show on the road, ladies!" Wakka clapped his hands together.

"Let's go Gullwings!" Rikku called out. Yuna, Rikku, and Paine gave each other high fives in response.

"Wait, ... how are we going to tell teams apart without uniforms?" Tidus tossed the ball lightly in the air a few times as he spoke. "In Zanarkand, we sometimes did 'shirts versus no-shirts'. If you call the challenge, then you're automatically the no-shirts team. That would be your team, Wakka."

"Nice try." Paine gave his chest a light push, caught the ball, and headed to her position on the beach. She drew a result plate from her pocket and touched a marble-sized sphere on it. After changing from her leather attire to shorts, she kicked her boots to the side. Now, she was ready for some serious beach sport.

Wakka drew alongside Tidus's shoulder. "Ooh. I'm kinda sorry that one didn't work out, ya?" he muttered under his breath. Then, he thumped the back of Tidus's head for suggesting such a thing, chuckled to himself, and jogged toward the center of the play boundaries.

Tidus winced and rubbed the spot where he'd been thumped.

Yuna laughed lightly and shook her head. She straightened her shorts and removed her wrap-style gunner skirt, handing it to Lulu, who sat a safe distance away with the baby on her lap. "Could you hold this please? I don't want to trip on it."

"Yunie!" Rikku came running to her side, looking like the proverbial cat who swallowed a mouse. "Come here, come here! I got a plan!" She took her cousin's hand and dragged her toward Paine. Then, the three of them huddled and whispered for a minute or two.

Tidus quirked a brow. "Plan?"

"Good lords." Cid rolled his eyes to Brother where they stood on the sidelines. "If Rikku's running the show instead of Wakka, there's no telling what kind of defense the boy's going to need."

Tidus stripped out of his shirt and turned toward his team to indicate they were to follow suit. He tucked the shirt securely into the waist of his shorts and did a head count and strategy session just as Buddy jogged up to join the play.

After making sure that team numbers were matched for play, everyone took their positions on the field. Shinra volunteered to referee the match. "Blitz-off!" he cried out, blew the whistle, and tossed the ball into the air.

Exploiting his talent with powerful jumps, Tidus was the first one to nab the ball in play, and he immediately cut to the left with it. Wakka slammed into him and wrestled the ball from him, but he didn't get far before Letty stole it back and carried it to the outside. Tidus ran to set up for a pass. Wakka dragged him to the ground, but Tidus escaped his muscular friend and sprinted toward Letty for the pass again.

"Tidus!" Yuna cried out and waved.

Hearing her call his name, he turned.

Rikku and Yuna, did a couple of choreographed steps then turned their backs to him and wiggled their short-shorts in unison.

"Oh -" He stopped in disbelief. "Uhn!" He winced as the ball _shwocked_ into the side of his head instead of completing the pass. Wakka followed the fumble with another bone-crunching tackle that sprawled Tidus in the sand.

Laughter bubbled up from the spectators at the unusual defensive play, and its brilliant results. Lulu found herself laughing, too, but Cid and Brother stood on the sidelines, stunned speechless.

"I'll take that," Paine said, picking up the ball and running with it. She had a clear shot toward the canoe that had been declared the other team's goal, so she took it.

Most of the team members that had seen the play were laughing with everyone else, but Keepa had seen Paine play in Luca a couple of times and kept his focus long enough to block her shot.

Tidus scrambled to his feet and marched toward Rikku and Yuna, pointing a finger at them. "Okay, that was NOT right!"

"It worked didn't it?" Rikku countered.

"You didn't play like that in the league games, did you?"

"Of course not. That was just for you." Yuna hid her laughter behind the back of her hand.

"There's nothing in the rule book that says anything about dancing during a play." Rikku pointed back at him, poking him in the chest.

"That wasn't dancing!" he complained. "That was a deliberate cheat!"

"It wasn't a cheat. A cheat would have been to use a darkness dance spell. This was just a tactical distraction." Paine shrugged and gave him a small, curt smile.

Tidus could hear Wakka's boisterous laughter behind him and looked over his shoulder in annoyance.

"That look on your face was priceless!" Wakka laughed aloud some more.

Tidus lowered his gaze and pressed his lips together, not knowing whether to be irritated or just embarrassed. When he looked back up, however, he couldn't take his eyes off of Yuna. She was laughing, too - genuinely laughing. He had not seen her laugh since the beginning of her pilgrimage. He had missed that laugh. Change had been good for her if it allowed her to laugh once more, even if it was at his expense. He allowed himself a chuckle at his own vulnerability, and then regathered his cool. "Okay, I see how this is going to be. I can handle it." He stepped backwards toward the initial set up again.

Shinra snickered as Tidus and Wakka both repositioned themselves near the throw-in.

"You set me up," Tidus accused his opponent.

"I didn't do nothing!" Wakka defended himself between chuckles. "They targeted you, and you fell for it."

Tidus narrowed his eyes on his friend, but crouched and waited for the next play.

Amid the chants, cheers, and laughter from the villagers, the whistle was blown and the ball was thrown. This time, Wakka used his mass to shove Tidus aside before the spry, young athlete could jump, allowing the former Auroch's captain to claim the ball first. Tidus had no hope of tackling him, so Wakka freely ran until he saw an opening to pass the ball to Rikku. She carried the ball to the right and threw a long pass to Yuna. Catching it, Yuna dodged Buddy's attempt to tackle her, and ran toward Paine.

Tidus knew he had to intercept that pass to avoid letting Paine get the ball, based on what almost happened the last time it was in her hands. He raced to catch up to Yuna, then sprinted ahead and hopped in front of her. Yuna couldn't stop fast enough to avoid running into him, but as soon as they collided, he caught her around the waist to swing her over his shoulder. Yuna cried out, laughed, and struggled to not drop the ball.

"Yunie! Hey, no fair! You put her down!" Rikku raced toward him, but Jassu cut in front of her and bumped her into the sand.

Tidus saw his teammate coming and turned Yuna around, so that all Jassu had to do was simply take the ball from her hands.

Jassu winked at her in gratitude for the easy steal and ran toward the goal.

"Put me down!" Yuna laughed and pounded on Tidus's back.

"Wait, not yet! You might want to see this!" He turned her to face the other way.

Jassu dropped the ball for a kick and shot it into the fishing net that served as Wakka's team goal.

"Oh! What was that? Was that a goal?" Tidus cried out to Wakka and his team. "Yes! I do believe that was a goal!" He set Yuna back on her feet.

She laughed and gave him a light swat for detaining her like that, then brushed her wind-blown hair from her cat-colored eyes. She started to walk away, but felt a tug on her calf-length, covered braid. Tidus was still holding onto her with an impish grin.

"Yuna!" Wakka complained. "What'd you give him the ball for?"

Yuna grabbed her braid and tried to pry it away. "He was bouncing and swinging me; I couldn't hold onto it well!"

"There's nothing in the rulebook about sweeping a player off her feet!" Tidus answered for her, giving the braid a small twirl before releasing it.

"Oh, come on! That was a holding foul if I ever saw one, ya?" Wakka fussed.

"I wasn't holding; I was lifting! I could have balanced her on one shoulder - no-hands." Tidus did a mock imitation of what that would have been like, then left Yuna's side to go argue about it.

Yuna laughed at them and caught her breath as she smoothed her braid, pausing to fluff the end a bit like a lion's tail.

Rikku jogged to her side and giggled. "Told you, it'd be fun." She waved to Wakka for them to play the next round without them and jogged to where Lulu and the rest of the Gullwings crew sat.

Paine took one last look at the guys setting up new teams, chuckled to herself, then followed behind Rikku to the sit on the sand with their other friends.

Yuna noticed Paine's expression as she approached. "You're smiling. You had fun. Admit it."

"Well, don't act like it's a miracle. It was worth it just to see him get slammed from both directions."

"It was a dirty trick to pull on him, wasn't it?" Yuna giggled behind her hand.

"What in the blue blazes of the Farplane was that?" Cid fussed as Rikku sat down. "You call that a game strategy?"

"You mean the dance?" Rikku asked.

"Shame ... on ... you! Why don't you just moon the poor boy next time while you're at it," the older engineer sarcastically suggested. "That way, at least, he'd get by with only a heart attack instead of a two-way concussion."

"Aaaaahhh! No, no, no! No Rikku mooning!" At the thought of it, Brother covered his ears, ... then his eyes, and mouth.

Rikku frowned at Brother's reaction and smacked the back of his head. "It was just a dance to distract him from getting the ball. Don't get your knickers in a bunch. He won anyway. Besides, you usually like to watch Yunie dance."

"Not for _him_!" Brother burst. "He does not deserve Yuna's dances! He ... threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes!"

"He was just being silly like the rest of us. We knew he'd do something to get us back."

"He is not silly. He is nothing. He is nothing but a thought, so I will not think of him. He's so nothing, he's not even a ghost!"

"You hush up!" Rikku scolded. "I don't see you out there eager to play against him, you big chicken! If he's such a nothing, then why don't you go play against him?"

"All right." Brother puffed out his chest with determination. "I will. Wakka needs new players for next round. Let's see _Goldilocks_ try to pick me up and swing me around!" And with that, the captain of the Gullwings strode toward the game area to offer Wakka his services toward sacking Tidus.

"Pffft!" Rikku waved him off and let him go. "Just for that, we should moon _him_," she grumbled under her breath.

"The heck you will!" Cid protested. "No daughter and niece of mine are going out there and -"

"I thought your dance was brilliant," Lulu interrupted Cid's rant with a compliment, still smirking about the trick. "You may have just changed offensive blitzball tactics forever."

"Really? Thanks." Rikku proudly grinned. "I thought it up myself."

Yuna sat down on the sand and lifted her gunner skirt into her lap. She stared at it for a long moment and then lifted her eyes to the new round of game play already in action. As her eyes followed Tidus's movements on the field, Brother's words echoed in her mind. _Nothing but a thought_ ... Yuna closed her eyes and felt herself once more being hoisted and jostled onto his shoulder. She heard his laughter beneath her. She felt the warmth of his back beneath her hands as she steadied herself to watch the goal being made with her "fumble". She had caught the scent of sea water that dried in his hair making it a little stiff. And she had seen the sinewy muscles in his arms contract and relax as he set her gently back on her feet. He wasn't just a thought. He was real. How could he not be real this time? Why else would he have been allowed to come back?

"Are you all right?" Paine asked, noticing the somewhat absent expression on Yuna's face.

Yuna surfaced from swimming in her thoughts and made herself smile, though her heart was beginning to ache with unspoken doubts. "I'm fine," she assured her concerned friend.

Several hours later, the sun had set but the blitzball game was still going. Wakka landed hard on his back and lay still for a moment to catch his breath.

Tidus shuffled through the sand to hold a hand down to him. "Had enough yet, old man?"

"Are you kidding me? I'm not going to let some young ruffian... knock me down... without a fight." Wakka waved away Tidus's hand and stood, then leaned forward, hands on knees, to continue to catch his breath. He reached for the borrowed, white shirt, that Tidus had hooked into the waist of his shorts as a sweat rag and jerked it free.

Tidus straightened and folded his arms at his chest with a smug expression. "You're already knocked down. You might want to consider losing some of that _presence_ if you want to play ball again."

"Say the word, and I hold him down for you to pummel a lesson into!" Brother offered, coming to Wakka's side. Tidus had proved to be harder to catch than Brother thought.

"I can pummel his little body myself, ya? Emphasis on _little_," he added to Tidus. "I just need a moment to catch my breath is all." Wakka wiped his forehead on the shirt, and then straightened and pitched it into Tidus's face.

Tidus caught the shirt, but a loud whistle caught his attention from the side-lines. Yuna waved at him from where she sat with Lulu and everyone who wasn't playing in the game. Jogging toward them to see what she wanted, he dropped the shirt at their feet. "You've been practicing. That sounded sharp."

"Thanks." She was pleased with his approval. "Lulu wanted to ask you how much longer you guys intend to play tonight?"

Tidus shrugged. "No telling. We're not playing by match rules, or anything. Besides, Wakka's being stubborn. We've scored six to nothing on him so far, and he still refuses to give in."

"He won't cave in until he wins or he's _injured_," Lulu advised. "But it's time we all got some rest before he really does _hurt_ himself."

Tidus wiped the bead of sweat running down the side of his face and grinned at what Lulu was hinting. "Want me to take him down?"

"Be gentle with him. His pride will heal easier than his body."

"Gotcha." He turned and jogged back into the game, where Wakka had already taken up his position with his team.

"Was that wise?" Paine asked in amusement. "Wakka's pretty strong, but Tidus is more agile, and in better shape. He might really hurt him."

"Tidus won't hurt him," Rikku assured her. "He'll just knock him on his butt and then rub it in that he won."

Yuna laughed lightly with her at how well they knew him.

When the blitz-off opened again, Tidus ran straight for Wakka as soon as he got the ball.

"I know how he's going to do it." Yuna smiled to herself. "Remember that high kick that he used to do? He practiced it all the time after Wakka was injured and asked him to take his place as team captain for the season." Yuna closed her eyes for a moment as if seeing an instant replay in her mind. "He always sets it up by going to the far side of the goal and faking a pass."

Wakka caught the ball and ran toward the opposing goal. Brother raced for Tidus to try to sandbag him, but Tidus threw out an arm and shoved him into Wakka. He dodged the fumble that followed, grabbed the ball from Wakka, and headed to the far right - nowhere near the goal.

"Then," Yuna continued, "he would throw the ball high."

Wakka growled in protest and sprang to his feet to attempt to block him. Tidus calculated his buddy's oncoming intentions and waited until he was in just the right place. Then, he tossed the ball high up into the air.

"Then, he would swim after it and leap backwards in a flip to kick it." Yuna opened her eyes.

Tidus sprang high in mid-air, arching backwards to keep his eye on the ball. It was harder to do this move on land because gravity was faster and less forgiving than in water, but he revolved just enough to contact the ball with expert force. The ball shot toward Wakka's stomach, then rebounded and soared right past his goalie to slam into the fishing net that was serving as their goal. Tidus landed on his toes in a crouched position. The top of his bare foot stung like it was on fire, but his heart pounded with excitement. It felt good to be alive again. Amid the cheers for the fantastic trick shot, he stood and ran straight to Wakka's side. "Hey, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine." Wakka winced as he fought to regulate his breathing. "Just a little wind knocked out of me, that's all," he excused himself.

"You were in the way of my goal, man."

Wakka stood and put a hand to his stomach. "You were showing off, brat. That kick's a lethal weapon, ya?"

"Want to quit?" Tidus gave him a cheesy grin and baited him to fold.

"No. Just 'cos you got some fancy kick all figured out doesn't mean I'm going to let you have the game. That won't happen again."

"Okay, then." Tidus shrugged. "Let's blitz!" He slapped Wakka on the back and started to run back to the center of their playing field for another blitz-off.

"Wait just a minute! Hold on there."

Tidus stopped and faced him, cocking his chin to one side, ... waiting.

"How about we suspend play - just for tonight? You must be really tired from your journey from ... wherever it is you swam in from. We could continue the game when you get back from Guadosalam, ya? It would be a promise. And you can't break a promise, so you have to come back and finish it."

Tidus nodded and smiled to himself. "You're on."


	3. Chapter 3: Troubled Past

Chapter 3: Troubled Past

Wakka waved to his teammates that the game had ended for the evening. Then, he hooked an elbow around Tidus's neck - this time for support - as he walked back to where the women sat on the shore. He was breathless, sore, and exhausted, but he wasn't about to admit that to any of them. "I think we'll call it a standoff for now," he informed Lulu. "It's getting late, and he has an airship to catch for tomorrow. Don't want the boy to be too tuckered out to make that long hike to Guadosalam, ya?"

"We can continue the game when I get back." Tidus gave Lulu a sly wink. "Maybe we could all catch a game in Luca tomorrow," he suggested. "I want to go everywhere that I went before. I don't want to miss a thing this time!"

"Hey, that's a good idea," Wakka agreed. "The Besaid Aurochs aren't in the games yet because they have no captain, but I hear the Luca Goers are being taken down a notch or two this year. Beclam tried to take up the slack with training for a short while, but he was a real nut case. He finally went back to the Youth League and good riddance. Say, you wouldn't seriously consider, uh ..."

"Wakka, he's only just come back." Lulu interrupted that request before it found its way to his lips. She gave a small nod of thanks to Tidus for his cooperation in her conspiracy, and stood, cradling little Vidina on her shoulder. "It's time to go home and put someone to bed."

"Ah, the baby's already sound asleep." Wakka waved off her suggestion. "We can stay out a little longer."

"I was referring to you," she corrected him.

"Oh. Heh." He straightened and took her hand. "Well, we can meet you guys in Luca, then. Tomorrow night okay?"

"That sounds like fun." Yuna stood and offered the shirt back to Tidus.

Yuna, Rikku, and Paine waved goodnight to Lulu and Wakka as they left for the village, along with everyone else in the wake of the game and festivities.

"That kick should be illegal!" Brother loudly complained.

"Ah, but you wouldn't think that if you knew how to do it yourself. Want to learn it?" Tidus countered.

Brother snorted and marched toward the airship.

"Never mind him. That was a good game." Buddy shook Tidus's hand.

"The mathematical precision that you used to execute that kick was most impressive," Shinra added.

"Ehhh, thanks." Tidus hadn't realized he had used any mathematical precision for the kick. "I just waited until it looked right."

"You should consider becoming a professional blitzball player, boy." Cid slapped him on the back in a congratulatory manner. "Not just some fill-in bench warmer for hire."

"Well, I used to be, ... kind of." He shrugged with a somewhat uncharacteristic quietness about it.

"Which team?"

Tidus hesitated to say, but this was Cid. Cid had known him since before he faded. "Zanarka -"

"Oh, right. I forgot about that one." Cid chuckled loudly. "I was thinking about the real teams. I'll bet the Luca Goers would pay a mighty fine sum to add you to their roster with that kick of yours. Surprised you didn't take your foot off at the ankle with the way you smoked that ball into the net."

Tidus's expression fell slightly, but he nodded and chuckled a bit, looking down at his sore foot.

Rikku took note of his mood change, from boisterous to polite, and realized the subject of Zanarkand might have caused a momentary discomfort for Tidus. "Uh, gee, look at the time," she spoke. "It sure is getting late, Pop. We'd better go back to the airship and get some sleep if we're going to be island hopping tomorrow."

"You got a place to stay for tonight?" Buddy asked.

"Ah, no, ... actually," Tidus answered with some embarrassment.

"Well, we don't have any spare beds on the ship, but we've got spare space."

"What about Brother?"

Buddy shrugged and started to answer, but Rikku interrupted. "Just ignore him," she sang in advisory again, as she hooked her arms around Cid's elbow to lead him back to the airship before he could say anything further to Tidus about his past career.

Tidus took Yuna's hand and started to follow everyone else back to the airship, when he suddenly looked down at the shirt in his hand. "Oh, my clothes! I'd better run back to Wakka's and get them."

"I'll come with you," Yuna volunteered. "There are wild animals around here, you know. You shouldn't be walking alone at night."

"See you back on the ship then." Paine ran to catch up with Rikku and the others. She knew the two would be wanting some time alone after having to share their reunion with everyone else on the island.

"I think I can handle a coyote, or two, after having faced off against Sin," Tidus answered Yuna, amused at her concern about him walking back to the village alone.

"It's ... not really the animals that concern me," Yuna admitted, leaning against him as they waded through the evening tide. "It's probably silly, but I guess there's a part of me that can't help but be afraid that you'll ... disappear again, even before we reach Guadosalam."

Tidus stopped and faced her. "I'm not going to fade away again. I promise. And since it's a promise, I have to keep it," he repeated Wakka's strategy for staying optimistic about his situation.

Yuna wished that was enough to seal his fate to remain here. She released his hand and placed her fingertips carefully on his bare chest as she had earlier that day when she found him. His skin was warm and soft. He chest rose and fell with each breath. And yet, her senses had deceived her once already. She simply did not know what to believe anymore.

Tidus's brows rose with worry as he watched her try to convince herself that he wasn't a ghost. She was so different now, so much more confident, and yet at the same time so much more insecure about him. He placed his hand across both of hers and pressed them lightly against himself as she had done that afternoon, hoping to help reassure her doubts. "Yuna, ... you're the one who taught me to keep smiling, no matter what. I have fears about it, too, but I don't want to waste precious time being afraid of what might happen."

Yuna could feel his strong heartbeat beneath her hands. It was enough to bring a measure of relief to her worry. "You're right. You will always be real to me, no matter what the Farplane reveals."

Tidus drew closer. He leaned forward and kissed her for a long moment as he had wanted to do from so far away for so long - as he had that night in the spring two years ago. When he pulled back, she smiled at him again, and somehow that made everything better.

"We had better catch Wakka before he goes to sleep," she reminded him.

He nodded in agreement, took her hand in his, and made a perpendicular line from the beach to the path toward the road that would lead back to the village.

"Were you really a professional blitz player at your age?" Yuna picked up on his conversation with Cid as they strolled, alone at last.

Tidus found humor in the way she worded her question. "What do you mean 'at your age'? Makes me sound like a baby."

She laughed lightly at his mild offense. "All right then. How old were you when you became a professional blitzer?" she rephrased her inquiry.

Tidus shrugged. "Sixteen. I know it's really young, but I was picked for the Abes because my dad had been with them for ... _eons_. Everyone expected me to take his place after he left, and blitzing was kinda the only thing I knew how to do. I was just finishing the end of my first year in the professional leagues when Sin hit Zanarkand and brought me here."

Yuna smiled to herself, realizing that although she knew him, she never really had the chance to know much _about_ him. "Theeeeen, you're nineteen now, right? Just like me."

"Seventee -," he started to correct her, but stopped himself. It had been two years. Two years had passed that he knew nothing about. "I don't even know how old I am."

Yuna's brows rose sympathetically. "It doesn't matter," she assured him with a smile. "Were you famous?"

"Oh yeah. First as Jecht's son, and then as ... Jecht's son." He chuckled with a shrug.

She chuckled with him.

"I guess being the kid of the most famous blitzer in Spira had its perks sometimes. Kids got excited when I signed their blitz balls. I got to do TV interviews, though they always asked me about my old man at least once. Cute girls mobbed me." He shrugged playfully.

Yuna laughed and gave him a nudge that nearly pushed him off-balance, but after a moment, she became terribly curious. "Did you ... have a girlfriend?"

Tidus grew quiet as they walked up the hill through the grassy ruins to the main road. He tried to think of how to respond to that.

"Wait - never mind." She quickly wished she had not asked. "You don't have to answer that. It was a nosy question."

"Well, to be honest about it, I can't remember. I think I did, ... but I can't remember her face, or her name." His gaze drifted up to the stars overhead. He'd never thought about it before. Yuna was all that mattered to him since meeting her, but now that she asked, he wondered why his memory of something like past girlfriends would fail him so completely after only two years.

Yuna thought it was an odd answer. "What do you remember about your Zanarkand? I've seen it twice in visions now, and it looked so different from the ruins beyond Gagazet."

Tidus used the stars to form a visual image in his mind of the city that never slept. "It was bigger than the eye could see. It reached up into the clouds, and even up on top of the highest building you couldn't see the end of it - or the bottom of it. It had huge, tiered towers with colorful spires and waterfalls. There were wide, stacked levels of highways right up against the buildings with lots of cars and motorbikes."

"Cars?" She tilted her head.

"Vehicles with wheels."

"Like wagons?"

"No. More like, ... your airship, only a lot smaller. They would roll on the highways, but then lift into the air at higher speeds. I was saving up to get a motorbike so I wouldn't have to take the public rail everywhere. And I would have had enough, if I'd been able to stick around long enough to taste that championship gil." He continued walking across the wooden bridges near the waterfalls. "But the lights were so bright at night that you couldn't see stars." He stopped and lowered his gaze to her. "... Not like this." She was even more beautiful now under the moonlight than the way he remembered her in Macalania's crystal woods. He lifted the small, beaded braid of blue hair that she wore beneath her right ear and tapped the tip of her nose with it before allowing it to slip through his fingers. "What is this supposed to be anyway? Sprouting ronso fur?"

She giggled and pushed his hand down. "Did you have your own home?"

He made a face of mild embarrassment. "Nah, well, ... I did, but Auron lived with me for a while after my mom died, because of my age. I planned on buying an apartment overlooking the arena someday." He positioned his hands just so, as if visualizing it. "Short commute to practices - good place to schmooze on dates afterwards."

Yuna laughed and gave him another nudge.

"Hey, that sharp elbow hurts, you know?"

"Well, then stop telling me about how many girls you were interested in," she lightly complained about his teasing and started walking again, past the rushing waterfalls.

"All right. I'll tell you about the only one I'm interested in now." He gave her a meaningful glance, though he still had a flirtatious spark in his eyes. "She's never even set foot in my Zanarkand. She's from a puny, little, tropical island in the middle of nowhere. And she actually knows the name and face of every person there. They look up to her, not only because she's the daughter of the last high summoner to summon the Final Aeon for the Calm, but because she's friendly ... and smart. Oh, and she's kinda cute, too."

Yuna leaned against his shoulder and smiled to herself at the richness of his voice. "Stop trying to be sweet to make up for teasing me about your mobs of girlfriends. I want to know about you."

As they continued up the road toward more ruins that had been taken over by the outskirts of the Besaid jungle, he shrugged somewhat bashfully. "There's not much more to tell about me."

"Well, who were your friends? What kind of things did you do together?"

Tidus became silent again. Nameless faces flashed through his mind, ... or rather faceless feelings. Surely he had friends, but why couldn't he remember them? He couldn't even remember team mates that well.

"Did you have any brothers? Sisters?"

He slowly shook his head. "I don't think so."

Yuna thought this was odd. "You don't know?"

The more that he tried to recall his memories, the harder it became. Was he losing his mind? "I can't remember." Tidus stopped at the top of the slope that led down toward the village and turned to face her. "Why can't I remember?"

Yuna could see that her questions were beginning to make him uncomfortable again, and now she felt bad for asking them. "Maybe something happened to your memories after you faded."

"But I remember everything about this place. I remember Rikku knocking me out flat after helping me fight off fiends at the underwater temple. I remember Wakka pushing me off a cliff into the water. I remember Kimahri threatening to eat me if I got too close to you."

Yuna chuckled lightly.

"I remember watching you dance the sending in Kilika. ... And I remember what happened right before I came here. I remember Auron, my mom, my home, my dad's picture on billboards ... But I can't remember any one else from Zanarkand that really matters." This worried him now.

"Then, ... maybe you're just tired. You have been playing ball all day in the sun, you know. You've probably exhausted yourself."

"Maybe."

Yuna coaxed him to keep walking to the village entrance. When they arrived, the bonfire had been extinguished and all was dark and quiet, except for murmurs and chuckles of people returning to their homes. They visited Wakka and Lulu once more and retrieved their dried clothing. Wakka told Tidus to keep the borrowed outfit, since it was getting a little too snug for his "presence". Mission accomplished, the pair continued their moonlight stroll back toward the airship.

Yuna resisted the urge to pick up conversation about Tidus's past again, seeing how it began to bother him. Instead, she began filling him in on some of the events in her life since the time he left, which he seemed to enjoy hearing about.

))((

Upon their return to the airship, Tidus followed Yuna up the ramp into the loading dock and through the engine room to take the lift up to the bridge. "This thing looks like it underwent a bit of an overhaul." He pulled on the borrowed white shirt. The airship was a little cooler than the tropical conditions outdoors, even at night.

"When we became sphere hunters, we had to make a few adjustments here and there. You'd never know she was frozen in ice once." Buddy answered, welcoming Tidus on board the Celsius. He was the only member of the crew still on the bridge at the time.

"Sphere hunters, huh."

"Yep. That's what got us into this mess."

"Do you still have the sphere that you thought was me?"

"Would you like to see it?" Yuna offered, leading him to the part of the bridge where Shinra ran his operations. "Kimahri found this sphere on Mt. Gagazet and thought it was you, so he had Rikku bring it to me. We all thought maybe you were still alive somewhere, and that more spheres might give us more clues where to find you." She sat down in Shinra's chair and paused a thoughtful moment as she read the control panels. "Here we are." She pressed a button displaying an index of the spheres stored in the ship's computer log, and then she selected the appropriate sphere and played it on the large screen.

Tidus blinked in disbelief at how similar the face in the sphere was to his own. He recalled Yuna's story from earlier that evening at the bonfire. "So, he's the one who tried to steal Vegnagun?"

"Yes. But, he and his girlfriend were both executed on the spot for it. She died before she could tell him how much his sacrifice meant to her - how much she loved him. So, the anger that Shuyin felt when he died consumed his spirit so much that he wanted revenge on all of Spira."

"It almost doesn't seem fair that he's real and I'm not," Tidus quietly commented.

Yuna was slightly alarmed at his sudden change of tone, and she turned in her seat to face him. "Don't say that. You _are_ real this time. I felt your heart beat. ... Besides, he's dead. You don't want to be dead do you? Being a dream is better than being dead."

"I don't see much difference. Either way, it's not like being alive."

"If you're dead, you can't come back."

"By not being born, was I ever really here? Maybe I'm losing my memories because none of them were real."

Yuna snapped off the sphere panel and stood with an angry expression. "You've been telling me to have faith that you're really here. If you want me to believe it, then you have to believe it, too."

"Yuna," Tidus spoke softly. "My whole life until meeting you was nothing but an illusion. I want more than anything to believe I'm real, but even if I'm real right now, nothing else from my life was."

Yuna's anger turned sympathetic, and then sad. She stepped closer to him and took his hands in hers.

Buddy had been standing by silently, not wanting to interrupt their conversation, but now he stretched and headed back for the controls for one final check. "Well, I'm shutting everything down for the night. Everyone else has gone to the cabin to get some rest, and I suggest we do the same."

"Yes, let's get some rest." Yuna coaxed Tidus to leave this discussion behind and follow her once more.

As they entered the cabin, Tidus and Yuna found the rest of the crew preparing to settle for the night. Tidus's annoyance at his patchy memory melted away at the sight of a chocobo pacing around the room. He remembered riding one of the overgrown chickens and found his smile again as he reached to pet its soft, yellow feathers. "What's this doing here?"

"Oh, we found him in the Thunder Plains. He looked a bit lost."

"At least he was easier to catch than that sorry road-runner of Calli's!" Rikku's voice added from above them in the cabin loft.

"And that?" Tidus pointed to the blue frog-like creature standing behind the bar.

Yuna chuckled and pushed his hand down from the obvious gesture. "That's Barkeep and his ... Darling." A second hypello waved at them from behind the bar on the opposite side. "We don't know their real names," she explained in low tones, "but that's what they call each other, so that's what we call them, too. They run the kitchen and make the best food in the world, believe it or not."

"How are yoo?" The blue hypello greeted Tidus with a bow. "Will yoo be shtaying with us as a noo croo member?"

"Uh, I guess so." Tidus hesitantly bowed in return greeting.

"_What_?" Brother marched down the stairs from the loft and confronted Tidus and Yuna. "No one said anything about him staying with us as a crew member! This is my ship! I am the leader, and no one joins this crew without me saying so!"

Yuna winced slightly. "Brother, he has no other place to go right now. It would make me really happy if he could stay." She backed up and bowed at the waist to beg this favor. "Please."

Brother glared suspiciously at Tidus, but then his gaze softened when he looked at Yuna. "It would make Yuna happy?"

Yuna straightened. "Very happy," she repeated, giving the abundantly tattooed Al-Bhed her best kitten-like expression.

Brother groaned and smacked himself on the head in frustration. "Ooooh, okay very well! But he is to do what I tell him to do while he is on board!"

Yuna looked to Tidus in hopes he would agree.

Tidus rolled his eyes and gave a resigned sigh. "Okay, I'll do what he says."

"Follow me." Brother turned and marched up the stairs. Rikku and Paine were already lounging in their beds on the long, sleeping loft of the cabin, watching as Brother dictated Tidus's new assignment to him. "Paine sleeps there. Rikku sleeps there. Yuna sleeps here." He pointed to the beds. "Therefore, you will sleep in the engine room."

"Engine room?" Rikku sat up on her knees. "Brother, stop being such a meanie! The sofa folds out into a -"

"Rikku." Tidus held up his hand to prevent her from speaking up and making Brother's sentence even worse. "It's okay. The engine room is better than sleeping on the deck. At least in the engine room I won't wake up covered in seagull droppings." He turned around and went back down the hall to the lift in obedient silence.

Satisfied, Brother snorted and went back to the bar to get a drink.

Rikku growled and pitched her pillow at the back of his head. "_Cdub paehk zaymuic uv Tidus_!" she shouted at him in their native language of Al Bhed, accusing him of being jealous.

"_E ys hud zaymuic uv Tidus! Ra ec y hudrehk!_" Brother denied it in the same fashion and shook his fist at her. In seconds, the argument degenerated into them making faces at each other.

Yuna side-stepped their argument to catch up to Tidus. "Please don't be angry with him. He means well, and he's just looking out for me."

"I know," he sullenly agreed. "I can't really fault him for liking you."

"I'll have a talk with him as soon as I get a good moment to speak with him alone."

Tidus stopped in front of the lift and turned to face her. His clear blue eyes met hers, revealing that his earlier optimism was faltering in the wake of his discovery concerning his memories. The tables had turned from only an hour earlier. Now he was the one needing reassurance.

"What's wrong?" she prompted.

"What if I wake up, and I'm not here anymore? If I'm still just a dream, ... what if I fade in my sleep?" he asked in a quiet voice.

"You were able to sleep when you were here before."

"I know, but I came from Zanarkand that time. This time, I think I came from the Farplane. What if that makes a difference?"

Yuna saddened. "Maybe I could stay up with you."

"Kinda hard to do if you're in the cabin and I'm in the engine room. Besides, staying up with me won't let me know if it's safe to sleep."

"Psst! You wanna trade bunks?" Rikku offered in a hiss. She came near and placed her hands on her knees, leaning toward them in a huddle. "I've got a plan," she informed them in a mischievous whisper.

"No!" Tidus backed away, waving his hands. "Rikku, I still feel the bruise on my face from your last plan."

"You bruised?" Rikku whimpered apologetically and stepped near to inspect the faintly red area on his temple and cheekbone. She winced. "Oh. Sor-ry. We didn't mean for the ball to hit you; we just didn't want you to catch it."

"What's the new plan?" Yuna asked in a hushed voice, since the door to the cabin was open behind them.

"It's just a plan to post watch shifts over him, so that at least of one of us will be alert at all times, in case he starts to fade," Rikku explained.

"What about Brother?" Tidus asked again.

Rikku waved her hand. "Don't you worry about a thing. You leave him to us." The Al Bhed girl grinned so wide that her dimples showed.


	4. Chapter 4: Dream Time

Chapter 4: Dream Time

The crew of the Celsius donated their spare blankets for Tidus to make himself a makeshift bed in the corner of the engine room. Shinra volunteered to stay in the engine room with him to keep him awake until Brother went to sleep. Boredom quickly set in, however, and Tidus ended up going outside to get one of the blitz balls from the beach. The two of them practiced volleying shots and passes to one another, and against the ship's hull, until Buddy came down and snatched the ball away from them, fussing about the noise they were making. Tidus sat down on the steps above the hutch to sulk, while Shinra went upstairs to bed.

"Our goal is to get Brother to sleep," Buddy reminded him with a hiss. "That's not going to happen with you throwing blitzballs against the walls and pipes!"

"There's nothing else to do down here."

Brother was dismayed. "You've been playing ball since before sundown. Don't you ever run out of energy?"

Tidus sighed and looked down at his sand-covered feet in silence for a moment. He was _very_ tired, ... but he was waiting. "Is Yuna going to be coming down here for one of the watches?"

The door to the engine room slid open, and this time it was Paine. She walked to the railing just enough to see them below. "Come," she stated, then she turned and stepped back into the lift, holding the door button to wait for them.

Tidus glanced at his blanket bedding and then Buddy with a questioning look, but stood and ascended the stairs to the lift to stand beside Paine. "So, what's the plan? All I was told was that I should go to the engine room and wait."

"We had to wait for Brother to go to sleep, but he shouldn't be a problem now. Rikku and I moved her bunk next to Yuna's, so she can keep closer watch on you. The rest of us will stay awake on rotation through the night, too, so she's not the only one. Sorry about the lack of privacy, but its the best way to make sure someone is awake at all times while you sleep." After Buddy stepped into the lift, Pain allowed the doors to close and touched the control panel for it to take them to the cabin.

When the doors opened once more, Tidus followed Buddy and Paine into the cabin to find that the lights were already out, except for a couple of small lamps to prevent tripping in the dark. The room was silent, and Rikku waited at the top of the loft. Tidus hesitated at first, but then slowly climbed the stairs to meet her. Yuna was dressed in a camisole-shorts sleep set and sitting on the middle bed that had been pushed up against the third bed. The futon sofa had been unfolded to make sleeping space for Rikku. Tidus's attention went back to Yuna. She was so beautiful in the soft shadows of the night. Part of him resented having to spend his first night back in the real world under the watchful eyes of so many people, but part of him was touched by the trouble they had gone through in order to stay alert to any sign that he was slipping away. "Thank you," he whispered to Rikku with full sincerity.

He started to step forward when Paine caught his arm and pointed down at their feet. Brother had set the futon from the chair's frame on the floor at the top of the stairs. Tidus pulled a face of annoyance at the strange man's audacity. That made Yuna giggle lightly, but she quickly put her finger to her lips to remind him to be absolutely quiet.

"The men sleep in a chamber downstairs next to the toilets and shower," Paine spoke in hushed instruction. "If you have to go in the middle of the night, I suggest you remember to step over him and choose the door on the left." She pointed to Buddy as he chose the door on the right, and stepped inside. "If you forget and accidentally wake our brotherly bulldog, none of us will ever hear the end of it for defying him. Fail us, and we _will_ exact revenge on you when you least expect it for making us have to listen to him."

Tidus's brows rose at her mild threat, but he nodded in agreement. "Who's first watch?"

"Me," Rikku whispered. "We'll wake you before sunrise to go back downstairs. Nighty-night." She giggled to herself.

Tidus nodded again and stepped carefully across Brother's sleeping form on the floor. Then, he crossed to Rikku's bed and climbed on it, trying to avoid making noise, as he moved close to Yuna.

She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. "You look exhausted, " she whispered. "Try to get some sleep. Everything's going to be okay."

He gave her a small kiss, smiled at being close to her once more, then settled into a comfortable position on the bed next to her.

Yuna could see the fatigue melt away from his face as he slowly exhaled and closed his eyes.

Rikku slipped a red and white twisted headband imbued with the power of preventing sleep over her brow and gave Yuna a thumbs up. Then she perched on her futon with a banana to munch during her watch.

Yuna sighed with relief and leaned back against her propped pillow. She lightly brushed Tidus's hair, and then the bruise on his temple, with her fingertips.

"Stop poking at my face, ... you bruiser," he sleepily complained in a barely audible tone.

She couldn't help but smile in response. "I'm not poking at your face," she whispered back. "I'm remembering it, ... in case ..." She paused and reconsidered her words. "So that I never forget." She didn't want to give any further voice to the fears. Her eyes took note of every detail that the low light allowed, from the silver earring in his left ear, to the barely-there freckles that dusted his nose. "Go to sleep." She kissed his forehead and laced her fingers between his.

))((

Tidus remembered the final sending - the one that destroyed Sin, but cost him dearly. Yuna ran to hold onto him so he wouldn't slip away, but her body passed right through his. As she fell to the deck amid glowing pyreflies, he stood in sad silence for a moment. Then, he looked down at his hands in disbelief as they thinned and moisture blurred his vision. So many pyreflies taking his soul away ... He couldn't stand there and disintegrate into nothing right before his friends. So, he hugged her one last time - or tried to, anyway. He stayed until his body became too numb to feel her warmth. Then, swallowing his courage, he stepped forward through her and ran. He ran without looking back because looking back would have been even more painful than leaping over the airship to his death. But he didn't die because he never really existed. The pyreflies maintaining his form dispersed the instant he started to fall. That was the last thing he remembered of her or his friends. Everything after that was a replay of what came before it. He thought he could hear her. He thought he could sense that she needed him. But when he called, no one answered. He was completely and utterly alone in a void between space and time.

))((

Tidus awoke with a start, afraid of what had happened to him. Cold sweat beaded his brow and his heart raced, but he opened his eyes to find that Yuna was practically nose-to-nose with him, ... and sound asleep. He sighed heavily and reached a hand to touch her cheek, as if touching her was his only reassurance that _she_ wasn't just a dream.

Yuna's eyes fluttered open at the soft sensation, and she rested her hand over the silver, chain bracelet on his left wrist.

He glanced up at the large window panels over the beds that revealed the first rays of light for the new day.

Paine approached the bed from behind Yuna and met his gaze. "It's time," she whispered, removing the twist-headband she'd taken from Rikku when it was time for her watch.

"I'm still here."

Paine offered a small smile of confirmation. "But you won't be for long if you don't shake a leg down to that engine room before Brother wakes up."

Tidus drew his arms underneath himself and pushed up from the bed. Yuna reluctantly let go of his wrist, but smiled sleepily at him. Squinting through the low lighting, he groggily made his way off of the bed and around it toward Paine. His toe hit the corner of the bed and a loud curse nearly slipped free, but Paine's reflexes were quick enough to clap a hand over his mouth and give him a scolding frown. Her head nodded toward Brother, and he raised a hand to let her know he had it under control, before he stopped hopping and limped toward the futon blocking the stairs. Placing his hands on the banister, he swung himself over Brother's body and took one last look at Rikku sprawled on her futon. Yuna sat up to watch him go. He nodded in gratitude to Paine and padded back to the engine room, where he wrapped himself in the borrowed blankets and tried to go back to sleep.

))((

The next time Tidus opened his eyes, he found Rikku's green, marble-swirled, Al Bhed eyes in his face. "Ah!" he sat up with a start, prompting her to echo his reaction with a high-pitched squawk.

"Don't do that!" She quickly backed away. "You could give someone a heart attack that way, you know?"

Tidus rubbed his eyes and looked around to try and remind himself why he was in the engine room of the Celsius. "What are you doing down here?"

"You're still here." She beamed at their accomplishment.

"Yes."

"Everyone else has showered and eaten except you, and we're getting ready to land in Kilika. I came to get the blankets and put them away, but you have to get out of them first."

Tidus pushed away the blankets and stood. Glancing askew at the strawberry-blond Al Bhed girl, who was more frightening to wake up to than an alarm clock, he picked up yesterday's clothing and wandered up to the cabin in search of the shower. After finding it in the lower cabin and washing away last night's sand and sweat, he changed back into his familiar yellow shirt and black shorts. Then, he sat down at the bar by himself and gestured to the hypello barkeep.

"What can I doo for yoo?" The hypello slowly approached.

"What have you got for breakfast? I'm so hungry I could eat a whole shoopuff!"

"Shoopuffsh is rububbery. Zey makes you burpsh and make funny noishes, too. Not a very good idea to eat Shoopuffsh."

Tidus lifted a brow. Apparently, hypello had no ability to think figuratively.

The cabin door opened and Yuna came in wearing Lenne's dress sphere and a wide grin. "Oh good, you're awake! Would you like to go see Kilika now?"

"Wasn't Kilika destroyed by Sin?"

"They've rebuilt it since you were here last. You'll have to stop in and see it before we go to Luca. You can eat breakfast in Kilika, if you like."

"Okay, but I hope they have enough food. I'm ..." He glanced over his shoulder at the hypello, who waved and smiled stupidly at him as he walked out the door. "Really hungry."

"Did you sleep okay after you went back to the engine room?" Yuna asked as she led the way to the lift.

He nodded, happy to report that he had. "You look really tired, though. Did you get any sleep?"

Yuna flushed with mild embarrassment that he had caught her accidental nap. "Not much, but someone had to keep an eye on you."

"You can't go every night without sleep just to make sure I don't fade away."

"I know. But I think one night is all we needed to be sure you would be safe."

"I suppose. I guess I'm really lucky to have friends willing to rearrange their sleep for me, huh?"

"Well, that and the fact that Paine cast sleep spells on Brother every time he rolled over." She giggled lightly, but then put a finger to her lips to remind him that was their little secret.

))((

Later that morning, when Tidus followed the crew out of the engine room and onto the wooden docks at Kilika Island, he turned a complete circle in amazement trying to take in the whole view. "Woah! They really did fix up this place, didn't they?"

Rikku pointed to the large, pink, seashell-like building that had been built to the eastern shore. "Over there's the new headquarters for the Youth League. It's so brand new that they're still moving into it. They're saying Kilika's going to expand and be as big as Luca someday."

"So, where's the food?" Tidus asked.

"Are you sure he's not another relative of Rikku's?" Paine asked of Yuna.

Yuna could only smile and shrug. "Maybe it's been two years since he's eaten anything."

"Hm." Rikku put her hands on her hips, closed one eye, and studied Tidus closely, making him step back with caution. "You know, I think you're right. He doesn't look a bit different since the day he left. It's as if he's been suspended from time."

Annoyed at all the inspections he was enduring, Tidus copied Rikku's stance and leaned forward to inspect her in the same manner. "Ah, but _you've_ gotten older, I see."

Rikku's face drew into a pout and she punched him on the shoulder before whipping her long, beaded braids away from him in a huff.

Paine and Yuna smiled at his way of handling Rikku's nosy observations. "Food's this way," Paine announced as her long legs set the stride down the docks toward the shops.

"So, what's the Youth League?" he asked as he followed, picking up on Rikku's bit of news. "It's been two years since I've been around, and I'm completely unfamiliar with half the stuff that goes on around this place, anyway." Tidus turned in circles as he walked, still trying to take in all the new sights that rebuilt Kilika had to offer.

"In the beginning of the Eternal Calm, people had trouble agreeing on which direction Spira should take for the future," Yuna explained. "When Yevon fell apart, New Yevon rose out of its ashes. Their supporters feared that if we rushed blindly into the change that the Calm brought, and forgot the mistakes of civilizations past, we would be likely to suffer the same fate again. So, they took over the care of the temples and insisted on keeping most of its traditions. The Youth League formed out of a group of people who felt that New Yevon still kept way too many secrets about Spira's past, just like the old Yevon temples did. They believed radical change was the answer to avoiding falling under a monopoly of power again. Their acts were ... brash, ... wanting to burn temples and such. And while New Yevon and the Youth League argued about it, a third group, the Machine Faction, was created by some research engineers from the Al Bhed. Machina are back in use all over Spira now thanks to them, even in the temples. Only they try not to call them 'machina' anymore because of bad associations. They call their new creations 'machines'. They weren't really interested in politics, but they supplied both of the other two factions with rebuilt machina for defense purposes. So, even though each group was trying to avoid making the same mistakes of the past, they were actually setting up the same pattern of self-destruction that brought on the Machina War." Yuna paused thoughtfully at her own assessment of the irony.

"Sounds like some things have changed and some things have stayed the same - people are still arguing over politics as usual, " Tidus commented with a tone of mild disgust.

His reaction caught Yuna by surprise. "That's almost exactly what Shuyin said. That's why he was determined to purge the world of fighting once and for all. But we were able to stop him before it came to that. Nooj, Gippal, and Baralai, the leaders of the three factions, were able to come together to stop Vegnagun, so their groups are now trying to forge alliances on the issues they disagree about. It's slow progress, but it's good progress. I think we realize now that escaping the mistakes of the past depends on all of us being able to work together in spite of our differences."

"And sphere hunters fit into all of this because everyone wants to find the spheres that unlock those secrets to Spira's past?" Tidus guessed.

"Exactly!" Rikku answered. "Well, many people hunt spheres now because they're worth a lot of gil, but Yunie and Paine had more personal reasons for wanting to find them." She winked at Yuna. "And they both found who they were looking for, right?"

"You could say that." Paine's smile was bitter-sweet as she recalled her collection of spheres containing the recorded experiences of her and her friends.

"Oh yeah? You lost someone from a dream, too?" Tidus asked. Maybe he wasn't the only one.

Paine cast him a sidelong glance. "Lost from a nightmare was more like it. Around the time of Operation Mi'ihen, Maester Kinoc formed a group of elite crusaders for Yevon that included any ethnic origin, including Al Bhed. He ran them through various training exercises that I was to help record, which is where I met my friends. But then as a final test, he sent them to investigate a haunted cave he had recently unsealed under Mushroom Rock Road. Based on what I've learned about him, I can't help but wonder if he thought whatever was in there would give him one-up on Maester Seymour. It's clear now that they were vying for power behind their thrones. Even Baralai picked up on that because he used it to persuade Seymour to cloak him and erase his record. But Kinoc played the innocent role well enough to sacrifice an entire squadron to the cave.

"While in there, my friends were overcome by pyreflies. It looked like the place was swarming with fiends, but we know now that it was only one. Shuyin had apparently been sealed off in that cavern for quite some time, gaining strength, until he was able to lash out at the squad members who found him. He filled them with his despair, and members of the squad under his possession started shooting each other. My friends barely escaped with their lives - first due to the fiend's possession making them want to kill each other, and then from Maester Kinoc trying to shoot them in the back for living to tell about it. So, after we escaped, we agreed to go our separate ways to avoid Yevon finding us as a group. But we swore to go back and find out what that thing was someday. And then Nooj shot us ..." Pain's voice trailed off, and she wore an almost vacant expression.

"Shot you?" Tidus's eyes widened slightly at her tale. "One of your friends?"

"Shuyin had completely possessed him that day and stayed with him, using him until he could transfer into Baralai and then take control of Vegnagun. We survived the injuries, but not knowing what happened to one another, and not being able to trust one another, ... not knowing what happened in that cave or why ... That was the nightmare. We've pieced enough of the events together to make some sense of them now."

Tidus blinked in astonishment at Paine's revelation. "Woah. We didn't know about any of that going on while we were there visiting the Crusaders for Operation Mi'ihen."

"Of course not. Maester Kinoc didn't want anyone to know about it. That's why he initiated my friends and ordered them to report there to protect Maester Seymour, but then tried to kill them."

"This Shuyin guy sounds almost as bad as Sin."

"What he did was unforgivable," Paine flatly stated as they walked. "Had the decision been up to me instead of Yuna, I don't know that I could have felt any compassion toward him whatsoever. But I guess that's the reason why someone like Yuna is High Summoner and not me."

Tidus glanced at Yuna. He had already seen her personal reason for sphere hunting, last night on Shinra's big screen. Strange how everything was connected. "So, now that you've found your answers, what's next?" he asked.

"Well, we haven't really thought about it," Yuna admitted. "It's still too soon in the aftermath of everything that's happened to say what we should do next. But, I think it would be good to continue to hunt spheres for the sake of recovering Spira's past, don't you? The more that I hear about the Machina War, for example, the more curious it makes me, and the more sad it seems, that we hardly know anything about our own history. There's obviously a lot about Spira that has been lost over time. And there's a bit of a new mystery, too. When we went down under Bevelle to the Farplane, it was as if the entire underworld was nothing but machina construction, yet no one seems to know anything about it, not even the priests at the temple. Even the road to the Heart of the Farplane was machina. I thought it was strange that the souls of the dead should be found on a magical glen in the middle of steel and circuits."

"Maybe the most important key to Spira's past lies hidden in the machina on the Farplane," Paine suggested.

"The Farplane has machina in it?" Brother asked with surprise, as he, Buddy, and Shinra caught up to them on the docks after landing the airship in the bay nearby.

"I think so," Yuna nodded. "Vegnagun was only a small part of a much larger hall of circuits down there. I can't help but wonder what it all does."

"Are you suggesting we go back and take a look at the rest of the place?" Buddy asked. "We could do it. We still have that teleport short-cut Shinra set up you know."

"I know, but ..." Yuna touched the necklace at her throat. "I'm not sure I'm ready to go back." Her eyes shifted to Tidus. "I'm not sure I want to disturb whatever is down there."

"I'm not looking forward to going back, either," Rikku agreed. "That place was really creepy. But maybe we could take Brother and Buddy with us under Bevelle just to sneak a peak at that big pumpy-pump thing under the temple. Maybe they could take a look at it and tell us what it does."

"I'm in." Buddy shrugged, ready for some adventure.

Brother didn't look so sure. "Machina in the Farplane? ... They can't be ordinary machina."

"Brother's right," Yuna agreed.

"I am?" He was pleased that she had noticed.

"Mh. Whatever the purpose of all of that design has down there, it can't be the same as mere hover craft or robotic guards. It's down there for a special reason. I'm not so sure that messing with it is a good idea when everything finally seems to be ... right."

Tidus felt self-conscious. He knew he was the reason Yuna was afraid to dig any deeper than they already had. This was all getting very complicated. So, he decided that he needed a distraction. "Fish." He turned and followed his nose a few steps further to the vendor. "Two fish and some rice, please. Oh, and some of that yellow fruit over there." He pointed to a large palm fruit.

Yuna grinned at his appetite and joined him at the vendor to pay for his order.

With his fish dish in hand, he sat down on a crate and hungrily began to devour it. "You know what I'd like to see before we leave here? The temple."

"But there's a big, dangerous hole where the fayth used to be. It might not be safe for you to get so close to the Farplane, Tidus." Rikku leaned forward with her hands on her knees, tilting her head as she watched him eat.

"I want to see it all the same," he insisted.

"Well, well, well,... look who we have here." Dona stood on the docks behind them with Barthello at her side. She stepped closer to glance over Tidus as he sat eating. "Never thought we'd see you again. Where'd you run off to after the Calm, 'Guardian'?"

"I ... went back to where I came from, ... like everyone else," he reluctantly answered, not wanting to talk about it to them. He still remembered how they had shoved him down into the cloister of trials.

"Hm." Dona gave a wane smile and circled behind Yuna. "By the way, congratulations, Yuna. I hear you were successful at destroying that monster under Bevelle."

"Yes, it's been taken care of. It's good to see that you and Barthello are back together."

"Well, I couldn't keep him sniveling outside for too much longer. It was getting on my nerves. By the way, if your blitz player is going to play guardian again, isn't it time that you bought him some new clothes?"

Tidus stopped eating and looked down at his yellow and black Zanarkand blitz ball uniform. "What's wrong with my clothes?" he asked over a mouthful of rice.

"Isn't that the same thing you were wearing two years ago? Besides, it makes you look like a page out of history, that's what. Come, Barthello." Dona shook her head and continued on her way.

Tidus scowled at her back as she walked away. "I really don't like her."

Behind Dona's back, Barthello stopped and turned around to face Yuna. "Thank you," he mouthed with a big grin.

Yuna nodded in gratitude as he ran to catch up with Dona. "She's not so bad."

"Well, she has a weird way of greeting people, that's for sure." Tidus swallowed his mouthful of rice. "Can I help it if I was in the middle of a blitzball tournament when I was brought here?" He deposited his plate in the pan for dirty dishes and turned to take Yuna's hand. "Well, anyway, I'm done. That was the best fish I've had in a long time." He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

"Least you didn't inhale it and choke on it this time." Rikku remembered how quickly he had scarfed down the food she offered him when they first met.

"Let's go see the temple next!" he decided.

"Okay-ay!" Yuna yelped as he pulled her along behind him. His excitement at seeing the island rebuilt for the first time was infectious.


	5. Chapter 5: Island Hopping

Chapter 5: Island Hopping

"Hey, Yunie. Maybe we should get Shinra to make Tidus a dress sphere." Rikku jogged along behind her toward the Kilika temple.

Tidus looked over his shoulder at her with alarm. "Dress?"

"Not a dress, silly. You can wear whatever you want. Shinra just has to put it in a dress sphere on a result plate."

"I think we should put him in a dress." Brother added his opinions from behind.

Tidus slowed his pace to a walk and looked over his shoulder again, this time with annoyance. "Who asked you?"

"I don't wait to be asked; I tell you how it is," Brother emphatically informed him.

Tidus dogmatically rejected the idea. "I am _not_ wearing a dress."

"The magic of the garment grids can turn any kind of ordinary clothing into magical armor, and give you a few extra weapons," Paine explained. "It doesn't have to be a dress."

Tidus stopped for a moment to catch his breath and consider Rikku's suggestion with Paine's explanation.

"A thousand-year-old blitz uniform makes you look too conspicuous," Paine added.

"And putting me in a dress won't?"

"You have selective hearing, don't you? I said it doesn't have to be a dress."

Tidus still looked skeptical.

"I like the idea." Yuna grinned and clapped her hands together. "Let's do it! We can use the Besaid outfit that Wakka gave you and your own uniform to get you started. But we can also collect something from each place that we visit to give you a variety of levels of magic and defense. Shinra, do we have any extra spheres?"

"We have a few that are worthless for anything else. I'll see what I can do. As an athlete, he'd definitely do well with a warrior grid of some kind." The boy-genius adjusted his face mask.

"Warrior?" Tidus straightened. "Now, that sounds more like it." He grinned and proudly led the way down the docks to the forest gate.

The Kilika forest was a beautiful tropical rain forest, much like what could be found on Besaid, but with a bit more of a temperate variety and much more level ground for traversing. Monkeys and birds chattered in the tall, green canopy overhead, but the usual wild animals that tended to stray onto the paths winding through the forest didn't bother them this time. They made it, without incident, to the long, long steps to the temple.

Tidus paused in the center of the large landing that had been ripped apart by a giant fiend two years earlier. It looked as good as new. At the top of the stairs, he found not just followers of Yevon, but a variety of people intermingling. "Woah, this place really has changed." He pressed on further until he stood inside the temple's great hall. Memories burned in his mind like the flames of the temple itself as he went beyond the doors to the Cloister of Trials. "Is it okay for me to go in here now?"

"Well, not being allowed never stopped you before." Yuna was amused that he asked this time.

Tidus gave her a chagrined glance for bringing up the fact that he broke the temple's rules about guardians being present in the trials. Slowly, he began to retrace the steps he had taken to help Yuna solve the puzzle, touching each glass sphere that had unlocked the temple's secret chambers.

Yuna tilted her chin and watched with curiosity for a moment before she realized he was following the trial's order and layout. His ability to recall the steps of the very intricate lock seemed such a stark contrast to the fact that he couldn't even remember if he had siblings.

"Everything's so dark and dead in here now, compared to the rest of Kilika," he spoke, breaking the heavy silence that had settled within the stone walls. "It's like death and life traded places somehow."

"It's because the fayth aren't with us anymore." As soon as she said it, Yuna frowned slightly. If the fayth really were sent, how could their dream continue? If the fayth were not responsible for his return, then who was? Yuna found herself staring at Tidus in a very curious manner for a moment asking the same questions that Lulu had.

Tidus continued forward through the chamber of the fayth and cautiously approached the gaping hole where the spirit of Ifrit used to be sealed into stone under a large, protective node, awaiting the call of the summoner. He crouched near the edge and studied the pyreflies rising out of it. If the Farplane was somewhere beneath there, the answers he sought about his own existence might be down there, too.

"You really think there is machina worth exploring down there?" Buddy asked Yuna as he knelt beside him.

Brother rubbed his hands together behind Tidus's back. "Just a leeeettle, tiny push," he spoke under his breath.

Though she had not heard Brother's mumblings, Yuna reflexively reached for Tidus's arm, her eyes pleading with him to step back a few paces.

Brother sighed at his missed opportunity, growled, and turned his back to them for a moment.

"What do you think, Brother?" Buddy asked, bringing him out of his sulking fit.

"Hm?" Brother knelt beside his navigator and scowled as he tried to peer into the blackness. "I see nothing."

Shinra studied the chasm thoughtfully.

"What of it, Pipsqueak?" Pain prompted him to speak what he was obviously thinking.

"It's not a very logical place to begin. We should start with the area under Bevelle where Vegnagun was originally hidden - where I set up the com sphere. We want to examine the machina surrounding it."

Tidus glanced to Yuna and saw that her face was etched with restrained worry. It clearly made her uncomfortable for him to be so close to the chasm, but she was trying hard to say nothing more about it. "Okay, I've seen what I came to see here," he said, rising to his feet once more. "Let's go."

))((

That afternoon, Tidus came out of the bathroom dressed in new knee-length shorts of blue and green with a short-waisted vest of matching colors, slip on shoes, and leather arm bracers purchased from a shop in Kilika. "I fail to see how this is going to protect me from anything. I'm dressed for a picnic."

Yuna smiled, pleased at his change, and hopped off the bar stool to put on a finishing touch - a bandanna around his neck. "Well, at least you look very local now."

"Yeah, the last thing I want is to be accused of being conspicuous." He gave Paine a side glance for her earlier commentary and removed the uncomfortable bandanna to wrap around his wrist instead.

"Okay, hold still," Shinra instructed, holding a strange gizmo that looked like a gun toward Tidus.

"Woah, woah, woah! You didn't say anything about guns!" Tidus pushed the gizmo away.

"I have to copy the material structure of the clothing into the sphere. It's the only way to implant the clothing into the grid's magic. It won't hurt. Just hold still."

Tidus looked to Yuna with uncertainty, but she giggled and nodded that it could be trusted. With a resigned sigh, he braced himself and closed his eyes.

Shinra zapped the clothing with a ray of light that shimmered and transferred a similar shimmer to a golden card in the top of the gun. "All done," he announced. "Just be sure that you let me index each garment you wish to add to the result plate with a sphere. It's the stored energy in the sphere that changes it into armor." He handed Tidus the golden card. "I've designed it primarily as a warrior-knight grid to enhance your strength and defense, but each sphere can have different abilities. The grid can only do so much, though. The rest is up to you."

"Enhanced strength, huh? How much do you think I could bench press with something like this?"

"How would I know? I'm just a kid." Shinra waddled to the bar and hoisted himself onto a stool, dangling his feet back and forth. "Go put your blitz uniform back on. We'll add it next."

"Maybe I could bench press Wakka." Tidus looked down at his new wonder armor and headed back to the shower room. A few minutes later, he came back out in his previous clothing and allowed Shinra to duplicate its matter into another sphere in the garment grid he'd been given.

"Two down; one more to go." Shinra handed the grid back to him.

"How do you read these symbols so you can tell what it's doing?" Tidus turned the gold plate over in his hands a few times unable to make sense of the design that held the tiny spheres in place.

Yuna smiled watching him try to figure it out on his own for a moment, but then she drew her own result plate out and touched her warrior sphere.

When Tidus looked up, he was stunned to see her skirted attire had changed into black leather armor. "Well, that's ... nice."

Yuna's brows rose in amusement at his purposefully reserved compliment. It must have been hard for him to override his compulsory flirtatious nature on that one. She smiled to herself and reached behind her shoulder blades to draw Brotherhood out of its sheath. She looked down at the shimmering blade that had served her well on a number of occasions, but then held it out to him. "Wakka found it after you ... left." She stepped forward and gave it to him, careful to rest the razor-sharp blade against the wrist wearing the blitzball arm-and-shoulder guard, rather than his hand. "He gave it to me, but it's always felt like it still belonged to you. I think he would want you to have Chappu's sword again, now that you're back."

Tidus knew how much that sword meant to Wakka, since it was supposed to have been his little brother's weapon before he was killed in battle. "I'll take good care of it."

"I know you will." She removed the sheath from her own back and walked around him to strap it onto his back instead. When she finished securing it, and he turned around to face her again, a lump formed in Yuna's throat at the familiar sight of him holding the weapon in his old uniform. It was, for a moment, as if time had stood still. Tidus sheathed the large sword with ease, in spite of its large size in comparison to his small stature. He had grown accustomed to using it regularly in her defense two years ago. "Oh, and ... there's this one, too." Yuna drew herself out of her memories to step back and touch another sphere in her grid. From her dark knight armor, she withdrew Caladbolg and passed it to him as well. "These belong to you. We've saved up quite a bit of gil from our travels hunting spheres. It should be enough to buy me a couple of new swords while we're in Luca."

Tidus's eyes widened as he reached to take the hilt of the second sword from her. "You actually used these?"

Yuna removed the second sheath from her back and draped it over his arm. "I learned a lot from watching you and Auron. Of course, Paine's the one I really have to thank for my training. I had to learn to defend myself, since I no longer have aeons to summon." She slipped the result plate from his other hand and touched the previous sphere.

Tidus looked at Paine with surprise, who had been sitting quietly on a bar stool beside Shinra through this process. Then, he stepped back in wonder as the magic of the grid rewove itself around him, returning to the Kilika sphere. It felt different now. He could tell it was forming an invisible barrier against his body, not from the outside like actual armor, but from this inside, like an aura. "This is pretty cool." He grinned in approval. "I think this one has something to do with making me faster. I feel really light."

"I set the Kilika sphere to lighten mass for increased velocity. It's based on the first sphere configuration from Rikku's first plate so she could, ... um, ... get away with fewer injuries," Shinra explained with a somewhat guilty cough.

Tidus was mute for a moment. Then, he realized that could mean only one thing. "You turned me into a _thief_?"

Yuna returned the gold plate to Tidus and took the second sheath to strap onto his back, as she had the first one.

"Caladbolg contains great power," Shinra spoke from his squeaking bar stool. "You should try to find a more suitable armor to balance its energy, or your defenses could be drained for the sake of your attacks. The heavier the weave of the garment duplicated in the sphere, the more defense magic it can handle for enchantments. But this will do for now." The boy shrugged.

When Yuna finished, Tidus turned around to face her and slipped the powerful sword back into its sheath. He didn't know what to say.

"It looks like I have my guardian back," she quietly stated with a bittersweet smile.

"If you can swing Caladbolg, you no longer need a guardian."

Yuna drew close to him and slipped her hands around his waist, laying her head on his chest. "But I still need you."

"Come on, you guys!" Rikku called from the lift. "We've just arrived in Luca. We need to get going if we're going to get good tickets to the game!"

"Is he bothering you, Yuna? I can make him sleep on the deck tonight!" Brother called after her.

Tidus groaned lightly at the threat.

Paine stood and patted his shoulder. "You're on your own with that one." She walked past them to join Rikku in the corridor.

Yuna giggled lightly and hooked his arm to pull him along behind her. "Come on. We'll do the Besaid sphere when we get back. We don't want to miss the game."

Shinra hopped off of his stool and tucked his gizmo inside of a pocket in his small coveralls. Then, he ran to the lift to catch up with the others.

))((

The airship landed near the docks, and everyone disembarked onto the colorful walkway toward the stadium. Luca was full of life, as usual. Cid offered to stay with the ship, but the rest of the Gullwings crew made their way to the central desk at the stadium, where they could see Wakka's bright orange hair in the crowd. He and Lulu were already waiting for them.

"Hey, hey! You made it!" Wakka greeted them. "Would you look at you - you look like a regular islander in those clam digs." He couldn't resist teasing Tidus about his new attire. "Better be careful, or the Kilika Beasts will think you're a native and nab you for their team."

"I could handle it," Tidus playfully boasted.

"Oh, you could handle it," Wakka imitated him. "There you go being a brat again, ya? Your head's going to get bigger than a blitzball someday, and then you won't be able to do nothing with it."

"Nothing except knock you flat on your back on the beach."

"You willing to back that up?"

"Bring it on."

"All right. When you come back to Besaid, if my team wins, you become the new captain and coach my boys next season."

"Deal. But I might need to coach your team before I play them if they're going to give me any kind of a challenge at winning."

Wakka made a face, rolled up his game program and smacked Tidus on the head with it.

Tidus shielded his head with his arms and dodged with a light laugh.

"I don't know how you put up with him, Yuna."

"He's a stubborn, blitzball-obsessed jock. Imagine that," Lulu calmly commented to Yuna with laughter in her eyes, as she walked past them toward the ticket desk.

"Hey, so what are you saying with that smug tone of yours?" Wakka watched his wife walk past him.

The Gullwings crew followed Lulu's hint and proceeded to the ticket desk to make their purchases together. They had the entire afternoon in the city before the blitz-off, so the first thing they did was search for replacement swords for Yuna's grid. She found a light-weight saber to take the place of Brotherhood, and a new bastard sword to take the place of Caladbolg. The next item on the agenda was finding warrior-suitable attire for Tidus's grid. He settled on some tan pants and a red, dirt-colored shirt to go under a black suit of lightweight armor made from basilisk scales. Their savings substantially lighter, they stopped in the theater to watch a short movie, and then it was game time.

))((

After the games, the party walked to the café and ordered a late dinner. Lively conversation was on the menu as well, and when dinner was done, Rikku and Buddy introduced Tidus to the game of sphere break. He was repeatedly humbled by Paine, Lulu, and Shinra, but he enjoyed trying his hand at the game all the same. In fact, the only person he found that he could repeatedly defeat was Brother, but that didn't make Brother too happy.

Yuna was content with just enjoying the renewed energy that Tidus seemed to bring to the group. He always managed to do that somehow. The most difficult and frightening risks on their pilgrimage were nothing but an extreme sport to him. Sometimes, it seemed like the only thing holding his open recklessness in check was his equally open compassion. She may have been the one to tell him to cover his sadness with a smile, but he was the one who always made her laugh. The thought occurred to Yuna, that this was how his story should have ended, in celebration with his friends.

Finally, late in the evening, Tidus changed into the new dark knight armor and Shinra helped him adjust and balance Caladbolg with it, tweaking the more powerful grid to add a few elemental energies to some of his strikes. Then, they spilled back into the streets of Luca and strolled to the balcony overlooking the city toward the high road for him to test it out. Tidus switched his grid and chose Brotherhood first. When he touched the weapon's blade, sparks jumped from his fingertips to electrify it all the way down to the tip. He gave it a few practice swings, paying attention to the dynamic movement of the electricity along the blade in order to learn how it would affect his strike range.

Wakka leaned against the balcony, proud to see Tidus handling Chappu's sword once more. "I don't think I'd be touching that blade again until the charge dies down. Might make you look like you stuck your finger in a machina socket, or something." He moved his hands around his head in a fried, spiky gesture.

Tidus laughed lightly at Wakka's teasing. "Might serve as a good lightning rod in the Thunder Plains, if I wanted to land on my butt a half a dozen times again."

Wakka laughed, as did everyone else who shared that memory. "Heh, heh. I remember that. We warned you, but you took off running through there anyway. I'm thinking it was _more_ than a half-dozen times, ya?"

"Shut up." Tidus winced and waved him off. "You don't know what you're talking about. I meant to do that."

"Yeah, okay." Wakka chuckled. "Hey, you heading out for Guadosalam tonight, or tomorrow?"

Tidus waited for the sparks to fade before putting the long sword back into the sheath on his back. He changed his grid to the dark knight mode to test Caladbolg, then he looked to Yuna. "Your call."

Yuna was surprised he would leave the decision to her. She hated that this topic continued to resurface interrupting their fun. "Tomorrow, then. No need to rush it."

Wakka sighed. "Well, I'd love to go with you, but ..."

"But the time for adventuring is over for us." Lulu passed the tiny baby into his strong hands. "Vidina needs us to be here. We will wait for you to come home to Besaid. We will await the answers to your truth." She gently touched a hand to one of Tidus's cheeks, giving the other a light kiss. Tidus nodded in acceptance of her unspoken concern as she gave Yuna and Rikku hugs. It was unlike her.

Wakka shouldered the baby and gave Tidus a friendly punch on the chest against his new armor. "Take care. There's no telling what's out there on those roads. You got a promise to keep, ya?" He waved and walked away with his family.

"Wait, we can take you home!" Rikku offered as she ran down the stairs behind them.

Everyone in the group started to follow, when Yuna noticed Brother was lagging behind. "You go on with the others. I'll catch up," she told Tidus.

He glanced over his shoulder and knew what she was intending to do. Nodding in agreement, he sheathed Caladbolg and walked away without her.

Yuna walked back to Brother and fell into slow pace beside him. "You've been unusually quiet this evening. Didn't you have fun?"

"I will beat him next time at sphere break, I swear it!" He shook his fist in the air at Tidus's back.

Yuna winced slightly. "Don't feel that way. It is just a game, after all."

"Don't tell me how to feel. He's better at everything than me." His shoulders slumped. "I am nothing but a loser."

"That's not true. I'm sure there's lots of things you can do better than him."

"Like what?"

Yuna mentally reached for anything that could make him feel better. "Like ... working with machina. He probably doesn't know a thing about machina."

Brother's face lit up. "He doesn't?"

"Nope. But there's really no need for you to try to prove you're better at anything than him, Brother. We like you just the way you are."

"You do?" He straightened.

"Mh." Yuna smiled, hoping that would help.

Brother shifted his position. "Yuna _likes_ Brother?"

"Of course I do. My feelings about you haven't changed one bit since Tidus came back. It's just that my feelings for him are ... different. I like you in different ways."

"But he left you! Yuna deserves better than that."

"He couldn't help it. His connection to this world was dying."

"But I am always connected to this world. I am always here."

"Yes, I know that, but -"

"I will always be here for Yuna. Yuna makes my heart siiiiiing." Brother lifted her hand to kiss it, grinned broadly at her, and then headed back to the ship whistling to himself with renewed self-confidence.

Yuna wasn't sure what he meant by that, but he seemed to be feeling better. So, she shrugged in acceptance of how easy that was and continued the rest of the way to the airship behind him. When she arrived in the cabin, she found Tidus sitting on a stool at the bar by himself examining his grid again, trying to acquaint himself better with its imbued abilities before finding himself in the grips of a fiend.

"Did you talk to Brother?" he asked.

"Mh." She sat down beside him and interlaced her fingers on the counter.

"Well, what did he say?"

"He said he'd always be here for me."

"Sounds like he took it a lot better than I thought he would."

Yuna was puzzled. "Yes, he did."

"Oh, dear." The hypello shook his head. "Yoo tried to let Brother down eashily? Oh dear." He walked away, still shaking his head.

The door to the cabin slid open with a hiss. Brother marched confidently to the bar and stood before Tidus. "You and me - Mushroom Rock Road - hover bike race. Be there! Meanwhile, you can do trash patrol."

Tidus made a face. "What? Why?"

"Because you want to be a crew member, and crew members start by picking up trash."

Tidus snorted with a laugh. "You're doing this because I beat you in sphere break, aren't you?"

"You didn't beat me! I allowed you to win because you are a guest! Now if you want to be a Gullwing, get to work picking up trash!"

"There's no trash around here. The place is spot -"

Brother scrunched up a napkin that was on the counter and dropped it on the floor.

"-less." Tidus stared at the deliberately dropped napkin.

"And when you're done with that, you can wash down the deck!" Brother announced before leaving the cabin.

"It's friggin' dark outside! I won't be able to _see_ any dirt, much less clean it!" Tidus called after him. He looked to Yuna in disbelief. "What did you say to him?"

"I thought I explained that he was just as good as you, but that I liked you differently." She gave him an apologetic expression for her mistake in making things worse.

"You like us _differently_? See, that's one of the reasons he likes you: you always manage to make people feel better about themselves. I mean, that's one of the reasons I like you, too, but now he's going to ride my back even harder than before." Tidus unhappily picked up the dropped napkin and started for the lift to clean the deck.

Yuna stood from her seat and ran after him. "Wait! You're right; it's my fault that he misunderstood. I'll try to think of a way to fix it. Meanwhile, I'll help you clean the deck. But we'll do it tomorrow when the sun's out. Okay?"

He paused to reconsider, but then gave in. "Okay. But tell him it was your idea, so he doesn't hit me with kitchen duty as well."

Yuna smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Thanks for being so patient with him."

"Yeah, well, whatever. If my patience runs out, though, I'm going to pop him one," he lightly threatened.

"Hey, you two. Do we need to do Operation Dream Patrol again tonight?" Paine asked as she came out of the lift and passed them on her way to the cabin.

"Nah, I'm... I'm good for tonight, I think," Tidus answered with a small shake of his head.

"Say the word, Yuna, and we'll duct tape him to the pipes if we have to, to keep him from disappearing."

"Of course - tape. Why didn't I think of that?" Tidus responded.

Paine gave him a sarcastic expression for his sarcasm, turned her back on them, and entered the cabin.


	6. Chapter 6: Memory Lane

Chapter 6: Memory Lane

Bright and early the next morning, Tidus and Yuna took buckets up on deck while the ship was still docked at Luca and began washing it down as promised. Rikku came up to speak with them while they worked for a moment, but when she told Tidus he missed a spot, he slung some water from his sponge at her. She retaliated by slapping a wet rag at him. He picked up the water bucket to throw over her, but Yuna intercepted it just in time to make a backwash slosh all over himself, instead. The mayhem that followed could better be described as scrubbing the deck with each other, rather than cleaning the airship.

Eyebrows were raised as the trio returned below deck an hour later, soaked in suds, declaring that the ship was clean now, but no one asked questions about why they looked worse than their sponges and rags. Brother ran up on the deck to be sure they weren't trying to fool him, and found it spotless. This frustrated him beyond words because Tidus had been grinning and laughing when he came down. He wasn't supposed to be laughing. He was supposed to be miserable. He was supposed to hate being on the ship and want to leave.

))((

After lunch, Tidus switched his grid to the Luca travel gear, but opted to forgo the dark armor, placing it in the Besaid sphere for temporary holding, in favor of just regular clothing for the moment. He strapped Brotherhood to his back instead of Caladbolg, saving his most powerful weapon for a more dangerous environment, and had a hearty breakfast before joining Yuna, Rikku, and Paine on the Mi'ihen High Road to begin their trek toward Guadosalam. He drew in a deep breath, enjoying the sun on his face and adjusted the visor of his new green cap to shade his eyes as they began their walk down the dusty road. "This place has machina all over it now."

Rikku noted his surprise. "They guard the high road from fiends. There are also hovers to take you from one end to the other, if you don't want to walk or ride chocobos."

"This place holds so many memories. Hey, remember that old guy that we met over there?" He pointed to a small dome as they passed it. "He was a story teller that used to drone on and on ..."

"Maechen." Yuna smiled, remembering the last time she saw him, as she rested her hand on the magus gun at her hip. "He was the one who told us the story of Lenne and Shuyin. He remembered them. If not for him, we wouldn't have known the whole story, and we might not have been able to speak with Shuyin and reunite them."

"That's impossible. He'd have to have been over a thousand years old to actually remember them."

"He was unsent, but he didn't even remember his own condition, until he shook my hand and sensed Lenne's presence through my dress sphere."

"Then, ... that means he was dead when I met him too."

She nodded. "But he wanted to pass on his knowledge to us before he spirit left Spira."

"Then the dead still walk Spira."

"They still wander until they find peace."

"Like Auron?"

"Like Auron," she agreed. "In that sense they're really no different from the rest of us. It's just the ones with so much pain and anger that have trouble letting go."

Tidus nodded thoughtfully to himself. "Do they still turn into fiends if they cannot find their peace?"

"Yes."

"Then, Lulu's right. Killing the aeons was pointless, ... or impossible."

"We don't know that yet. We'll ask the guado about it. Sin hasn't returned, so we did change some things. I'm just not so sure it was the right thing to do now."

He caught the hint of regret in her voice and glanced at her with a sidelong expression.

"I wish that we had found another way," she further explained something she had first realized when having to face Vegnagun. "We shouldn't have had to sacrifice our friends like that." She gave him a meaningful glance.

He knew she was referring to him. "There was no other way. We did what we had to do."

"I'm just ... no longer so sure." She locked her fingers between his, leaning against his arm as they continued their walk.

))((

They stopped later that day at Rin's Travel Agency for dinner. After they placed their orders and paid their fees, they sat down at the table in the corner to rest. Tidus knocked the dust from his pants and boots, then slouched comfortably in his chair until the food was brought to them. Paine broke up an argument between him and Rikku over the cheese appetizers, and then Yuna told him more stories about things he had missed over the past two years. When they finished their meal, they rented four chocobos and headed out for the north end of the road, but Tidus turned that into an impromptu chocobo race, ... which he won.

When they finally reached the end of the high road, they reluctantly returned the chocobos to the check point and paused to enjoy the last colors of sunset. "I guess it's time to go back to the ship," Yuna suggested. "We can have them set us down here tomorrow to continue on foot, if you like, but we're not very well prepared to camp outdoors tonight."

It was the memories that Tidus was trying to find by walking his in own footsteps again, not necessarily the challenge of surviving in the wild. So, he nodded in agreement, and they called Brother to pick them up.

That night, the airship settled on the red-rock cliffs of the highroad for everyone to sleep well.

))((

The next day, Tidus, Yuna, Rikku, and Paine were deposited at the beginning of Mushroom Rock Road, to continue their hike.

"Hey, whatever happened to the Crusaders that used to be stationed here?" Tidus asked.

"They were excommunicated from Yevon and then pardoned, but they disbanded after Sin fell," Paine answered. "The headquarters are still there, but most of them have been absorbed by the Youth League. And now the Youth League has moved to Kilika."

"So, the old headquarters are probably abandoned now."

"Most likely."

Tidus paused at the entrance of the path up to the mountain's ledge. "Then, there's probably no point in stopping in to say hello."

"Not really. We should have thought to take you to the Youth League headquarters to see Lucille and Elma, though. I know they'd love to see you again," Yuna responded.

Tidus was thoughtful, but then made himself give her a hopeful smile. "Something to do on the way back." It was another item on his list of promises he intended to keep. "What about the Djose temple? Is it still there?"

"Yes, but it's as empty of the fayth as the rest. The same big hole to the Farplane exists in its chamber. The main difference there is that the Machine Faction has taken it over as headquarters."

"We should introduce him to Gippal and let him work off some of his energy on their research project." Paine lightly smirked.

"Research project?" His curiosity was piqued.

"It's a giant machina built with parts they're digging up in the Bikanel Desert. They kept saying it was virtually unbeatable, until we beat it."

"Why would anyone make something like that after Vegnagun was such a threat?"

"Well, he will probably deny it, but I think Gippal was trying to make something strong enough to fight it. I think he also realizes now that his research should be put toward better means."

"Wait! Wait!" Brother called as he ran to catch up to them. Buddy and Shinra were at his heels.

"What does he want? Don't tell me he actually wants to walk with us?" Rikku quirked a brow and folded her arms.

"Aw, man!" Tidus exclaimed. "I forgot about his challenge to race me once we came here."

Yuna turned his shoulders to face her. "Listen to me. You must let him win this one."

"Are you kidding? I always play to win."

"You've beaten him at everything we've done together so far. Let him have this one ... But don't make it look like it was easy."

Tidus snorted. "No way, man. If he's going to challenge me, he's going to have to win fair and square."

"Some things are more important than winning."

"If I let him win, do you really think that will make him feel better? Trust me, he'll have more respect for himself if he has to earn his victories. That's what my old man was trying to teach me that I didn't understand until now."

Brother reached them and put on his helmet. "Okay, Goldilocks, do you remember the race?"

"I remember." He accepted the helmet that Buddy offered to him. "Where's the finish line?"

"Brother, you don't have to do this -" Yuna tried to persuade him against it.

"Djose temple." Brother walked to the man sitting on the hover bikes for rent.

Yuna sighed and cast her gaze to Tidus one more time.

"Look, I'm just going to have fun with it. He's the one that's being rock-headed about this." He defended his position once more and snapped the buckle under his chin before following Brother to the machina.

"Gee, this is a tough call. Brother's always been good with machina racing, but Tidus doesn't give up on challenges easily. Who do you think's going to win?" Rikku asked of Yuna.

"It doesn't matter who wins. Brother's still going to be jealous," Paine predicted.

"What am I supposed to do?" Yuna pouted.

"Maybe we'll get lucky, and they'll tie?" Shinra suggested with a shrug.

"Let's go on toward the temple and meet them there," Buddy suggested.

"Meanwhile, we need a plan to convince Brother that Yunie's not the girl for him!" Rikku pounded her fist into her palm. "I wonder if we could uglify her, or something." She tapped a finger against her cheek while she considered the possibilities.

Tidus was adjusting his position on his hover bike when Yuna approached one final time. "Have you ever been on one of these before?" she asked.

"Well, ... there was the time we rode something like it from Lake Macalania to the temple, remember? It can't be too hard to kick it up a notch, right?"

"Be careful."

He nodded and waved her off that he would, then started the engine and turned the hover bike around to get a feel for the balance as it became airborne.

Yuna and company began their walk toward the Djose temple, spending their time shooting down Rikku's matchmaking schemes to get Brother to meet other women. When they were about a quarter of the distance there, the racers zoomed by them at an incredibly high speed. Then, right before their eyes, Tidus's hover bike took a spill and rolled off of the rock road into the ocean. Everyone gasped and ran after him, but Brother didn't even notice. He kept on speeding toward the temple.

"Tidus!" Yuna frantically called. There was no sign of him for a long, scary moment.

"He's a good swimmer, Yunie. Maybe he's just holding his breath for a really long time - like when he plays blitzball." Rikku tried to comfort her, though she was worried, too.

Finally, a sharp, clear whistle caught their attention. He was in the water near some rocks to the left, waving to get their attention.

Everyone sighed with relief and ran to where he was attempting to climb out of the water. Buddy reached down to him when he was high enough on the rocks, grabbed onto his hand, and pulled him back over the ledge onto the road. "Are you all right?"

"I'm okay." Tidus gasped for breath. The leg of his pants was torn and stained with blood.

"Your leg is cut. Can you walk?" Paine helped him stand.

"Change your grid, so I can take a look at it." Yuna knelt beside his knee and waited.

Tidus fished the golden plate from his pocket and willingly switched the sphere to some dry Kilika shorts, revealing the long, bloody gash from his knee cap down the length of his shin, along with some other scrapes and bruises.

Yuna placed her hand over the cut, closed her eyes, and brought forth a strong cure spell to close the wound completely.

"You were going way too fast, Mister!" Rikku scolded.

"It was a race." Tidus removed his helmet and looked down at the smashed hover bike in the water. "I guess I'll have to pay for that now, huh?"

Yuna stood and frowned at him with her hands on her hips.

His eyes met her angry gaze for a moment, and he knew all too well what she was thinking.

"Shinra and I can fish the bike out of there," Buddy offered. "We'll take care of the repairs, too. Maybe we won't have to replace it after all." He tapped Shinra on the shoulder and the two of them jogged back in the direction of the airship.

Yuna shook her head with mild disgust, but allowed Tidus to lean on her as he limped toward the temple.

"It was fun before I wiped out." He grinned in attempt to lighten her mood.

She was not amused.

"If the road hadn't curved under that overhang, I might have been able to overtake him." He leaned forward slightly to see her face.

She still said nothing as they walked.

"I'll bet I could do better with a little practice. Do you know how to ride them? Maybe you could teach me. It gets all wobbly because it has no wheels under it and ..." He could see she was not going to respond well to anything he said to excuse it. "... And you told me so, and I was an idiot for not listening," he surrendered in a flat tone.

The corner of Yuna's lips curled in a reluctant smile.

"Can I get some sympathy now, or are you going to stay mad at me? I can't walk, so someone's going to have to carry me."

Yuna cuffed the back of her hand into his abdomen for not being serious about what could have been a serious accident, but at the same time she laughed. "I can't carry you."

"Sure you can. I'm in 'light' mode. I'm light as a feather with the push of a button. Even Rikku could carry me now."

Rikku took offense. "Are you saying I'm weak?"

"No, I'm saying you're puny. There's a difference. Weak means you're just not strong, but puny means you're short, too." He patted the top of Rikku's head, and then draped his arms over Yuna's shoulders from behind, hopping and trying to lift himself on to her back.

Yuna laughed and humored him by hefting him onto her back.

"See? I told you, you're strong enough to carry me." He was pretty pleased with himself for being right.

"Okay, but what happens if I lean too far forward like this and ..." Yuna teasingly leaned forward.

"No! No, no, no! See - ah! Cut it out!"

"Oh, get off her back. You look ridiculous." Rikku poked his ribs.

Tidus squirmed away from the poke, just as Yuna released him, and he caught himself by landing on his sore leg. "Aaah-tch-tch!" He winced and hopped, trying not to put weight on it.

Even Paine allowed a rare laugh to light up her expression at his drama. "Pathetic." She shook her head.

Balancing on one foot, Tidus grabbed Yuna's and Paine's shoulders to steady himself, then he sighed heavily and hung his head. He finally gave up on trying to get any sympathy from the female trio and started limping the rest of the way over the bridge to the temple. Halfway there, however, Yuna lifted his arm around her shoulders and gave him an amused smile as she helped to support him.

When they finally arrived, Brother lifted his arms in the air in victory and laughed aloud.

His gesture made Rikku so angry that she sprinted toward him and socked him hard on the arm. "Well, I hope you're happy! He crashed back there and you were so full of yourself that you didn't even notice. He could have been killed for all you cared."

Brother lowered his arms and watched in silence as Yuna brought Tidus closer to the temple and helped him sit down against the railing. She crouched before Tidus and inspected his wound again, then walked past Brother into the temple's outpost to ask for a clean rag and some water to wash off the blood. To Brother's dismay, Yuna was paying even more attention to Tidus now that he had lost. Brother cried out in anguish and turned around to bang his head against the temple gates.

"Serves you right," Rikku touted. "Shame on you. Maybe you'll knock some sense into yourself this time."

Brother growled at her and marched past her to Tidus. "You crashed on purpose!"

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did!"

"Why would I do something asinine like that?"

Paine shrugged. "Oh, I don't know; because you did something asinine by taking the dare?"

"I challenge you to a re-race!" Brother demanded.

Tidus saw Yuna coming out of the outpost and looked up at Brother, then slowly shook his head. "No."

"No?"

Yuna brushed past Brother with a frown and knelt by Tidus to clean the blood from his leg. "The wound is closed, but it will probably still bruise. The grid's armor must have protected you from being crushed, even if you weren't wearing the outer shell. The rest of your body might be sore for a few days. It should heal up quickly, though, if you don't do anything stupid like that again."

Tidus admired her gentle touch, ... and even her scolding. He looked to Brother and shrugged, as if that was all the excuse he needed to refuse a rematch.

Brother growled and grabbed his head as if he could have pulled out every last hair out - if he hadn't shaved almost all of it off. He turned around and stomped away, but then he stopped and turned to face them. "You have trash duty the rest of the week!" he yelled back at Tidus.

"You can't make me do trash for a week just because I lost! Last time you made me do trash because I won!"

"I can make you do whatever I want! I'm the captain!" Brother shook his fist, hopped on his hover bike, and zoomed away in a huff.

"That bald, tattooed, son of a - gggrrrraaaAAAAAHHHH!" Tidus interrupted his grumblings with a growl, and then threw back his head and yelled at the top of his lungs just to get his frustrations out of his system quickly.

All three women hovered over him with mute surprise for a minute before they broke into laughter.

"Okay, that was pretty stupid, too," he stated with mild embarrassment. "But I can't help it! I try to be nice to the guy, and he hates me anyway!"

"He probably would have appreciated his victory more if you hadn't won so much sympathy." Paine pulled him back to his feet, surprising him with her strength. "Come on, you. It's time we got going. Our goal was to make it to the Moonflow by nightfall, remember? _I'll_ carry you this time, if you don't think you can handle walking. I'm taller than everyone else here, including you."

"Shorty," Rikku echoed with a satisfied grin and patted the top of Tidus's head.

"What's making all that racket out here?" Gippal came outside of the temple and made his way to Paine's side. After surveying Tidus's scuffed and water-logged condition, he smirked. "Who'd you beat up this time, Dr. P?"

"Just venting a little. Sorry to disturb you," Tidus grumped and tried to shake some of the water from his hair.

"Hey! Woah!" Gippal suddenly drew his short blades and stepped defensively back, his one good eye widening in surprise. "Isn't that the guy that was controlling Vegnagun?"

"No. That was Shuyin. This is Tidus. ... Tidus, this is Gippal," Yuna introduced them. "He's the leader of the Machine Faction we were telling you about."

Tidus tried a slight greeting bow while hanging onto Paine's shoulder, inadvertently making her bow with him. Then, he cringed slightly at the stiffness in his leg.

"O-kaaay ..." Gippal cautiously flipped and sheathed his blades. "Not the same guy with the anger management complex and the really big laser gun that could blow up the world, but looks freakishly like him. And you probably brought him here to play with our really, really big machine, right? Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this scenario?"

Tidus frowned slightly at being compared to Shuyin, but Yuna and the other two young women seemed amused at Gippal's statement. He shifted his balance to lean against Yuna once more.

"He's here because he took on a hover race and crashed," Paine explained. "Hit the rocks in the water pretty badly, but he's okay now." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "We think." She gave the side of Tidus's damp head a light shove in response to his earlier antics.

"Oh. Well, if he's injured maybe I could give you lift. Where are you headed?"

"Moonflow."

"That's not far. Let me fire up a bike." Gippal returned to the temple to leave word where he was headed.

Tidus hung his tired head and took note of the ache of every bruise on his body that was going to show itself by nightfall. "Yaaaah, not another bike ride," he lightly complained with a wince.

))((

Tidus actually enjoyed his second hover bike ride, though. Gippal's taste for high speed thrills matched his own. So, sitting behind Yuna, behind Gippal, and gripping the back seat of the bike tenaciously, Tidus found himself facing the blast of wind and dizzying scenery with eager relish. Gippal dropped them off at the Moonflow in no time flat, and went back to pick up Paine and Rikku while Yuna found a soft patch of grass for them to sit down on. After Gippal returned with the other two young women, he and Tidus chatted about the hover bikes briefly before Gippal said he needed to return to the temple. Tidus determined he was going to learn how to ride like that after his visit to Guadosalam's Farplane - another promise added to his list. His eyes shifted to the banks across the Moonflow. Beyond the shoopuff ferry and that forest was their destination. It wouldn't be long now before this long hike would be done.

"Gippal!" Paine called before he could get back on his hover bike. "We're considering checking out the machina connected with the Farplane soon. You wouldn't happen to know anything about its purpose down there, would you?"

Gippal rubbed his chin in thought. "Nope, can't say that I do. We saw lots of circuits lining the walls where we found Vegnagun, but we had one-track minds at the time. I have no idea what all that other stuff down there does, now that you mention it. When are you going back?"

Yuna looked to where Tidus sat staring across the water. "As soon as we're sure it's safe," she half-explained.

"I see. Well, if you need a hand, count me in. I'll tell Baralai and the Noojster, too. Maybe we can get together and disassemble it, ... see what makes it tick."

"Thanks for the ride, Gippal!" Yuna called and waved, as he hopped on his bike and rode away.

Rikku noticed that Paine watched him leave with a funny expression on her face while she chewed a fingernail. "Something wrong?"

"No, it's just that ... Tidus kinda reminds me of ..." Paine shook her head and turned away from the road to face the river. "Ah, never mind. Just rambling to myself."

Rikku moved to sit down in the grass beside Tidus, who had lain back in the grass and pulled his cap over his face to rest. "So how long are we going to stay here before going back to the ship?"

Yuna looked at the glow of the pyreflies over the river and glanced over her shoulder at the little stage where Tobli's jazz show was playing. "Maybe until nightfall would be nice. There's no need to go any further today." Guadosalam was just across the river and down the road a bit, but with Tidus's leg being hurt, she had no desire to push their hike to its limits today. Indeed, there might be only one day left for them to be together.

"Then I'll go get us some food." Rikku hustled away to find the vendor.

Yuna transferred her attention to Tidus, who had become uncharacteristically silent too soon after enjoying the wild ride. Then, she looked to the forest hiding Guadosalam from view and sighed.


	7. Chapter 7: The Farplane

Chapter 7: The Farplane

They ate their dinners that evening right on the grassy banks of the Moonflow as they gazed out over the pyreflies in the setting sun. In spite of the jazzy music playing in the background, their location was a reminder of the reason they had come this far, and where they were headed. After eating, Tidus pulled his cap low over his eyes and lay back down in the cool grass again to close his eyes and sleep, but he kept feeling something tickle his chin. He swatted it a few times, but it returned to pester him anyway. Finally, the sound of snickering reached his ears, raising his suspicion that it wasn't an insect that was bugging him. He rose on one elbow and pushed the rim of his cap from his nose with one finger to see what was going on. Rikku had plucked a long reed from the banks and was using it to amuse Yuna and Paine at his expense. "Give me that." He snatched it from her in a mildly accusing tone. "Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?"

"But that's what made it so funny." Rikku grinned innocently.

"My father once showed me a way to turn grass into a toy shooter." Yuna picked another weed, twisting one end over the other in a loop, and pointed the feathery tip at Tidus's nose. "At least, I think this is how he did it." The shot pinged him with great accuracy considering it was only a river reed.

"Oh, that's great! Let me try one!" Rikku became excited and picked another long weed to copy Yuna's trick.

Tidus watched as all three of them copied her instructions, aimed their newly made shooters at him, giggled, and fired in unison. "Very nice," he muttered with sarcasm as he wiped the seed pods from his chest. "That should really keep the fiends at bay."

"Well, what's put you in a sour mood all of a sudden? It's beautiful out here, and we've even got free music. Tomorrow, this long hike will be over because Guadosalam's not that far away, and then we can find out whether you're really real or not. You should be relieved, not grumpy," Rikku told him.

Paine gave her a slight frown. "That's probably why he's grumpy."

"Oh, right. I guess I keep forgetting that the Farplane could suck him in so that we might never get to see him again."

Tidus shot Rikku a discouraged look, stood, and limped a short distance away to sit on the riverbank by himself.

))((

"Rikku!" Paine and Yuna complained in unison.

"Sor-ry! I just wanted him to have fun. It might be his last night with us, and there might not be a next time for him to come back."

Yuna unexpectedly found herself having to look away and blink the moisture in her eyes. Then, she stood and quietly left to join Tidus by the water's edge.

"Why'd you have to say that? Now you've upset both of them," Paine scolded.

"I don't know. It just came out that way." Rikku rubbed her shoulder.

"Well, stop trying to cheer them up. There's a lot of uncertainty for them right now." Paine shook her head and finished off the last of her drink.

"I suppose." Rikku sighed, reluctantly remained in her place, and stuffed a bread roll in her mouth to avoid sticking her foot in it any further.

))((

Tidus looked up at Yuna's approach, gazing at her profile in the light of the pyreflies as she quietly knelt beside him. His melancholy mood now was so different from his joking antics while they were on the road.

"Hey," she spoke first, not knowing what else to say.

"Hey," he answered looking back out over the water.

"Rikku didn't mean that the way it sounded. She's just careless about what she says sometimes."

"I know." He was silent for a moment, as he plucked a stem of grass and rolled it between his forefinger and thumb. "I've been thinking ... Now that we're almost to Guadosalam's Farplane, I'm not so sure I want to know the truth, you know?"

"I'm scared, too," she admitted.

Tidus leaned against her, and Yuna shifted until she could cradle his head in her lap. There was a long moment of silence that followed. Then, she started humming.

"What song is that? It sounds familiar."

"It's the song Lenne gave to me in the Thunder Plains."

"Oh ... It's nice." Tidus closed his eyes and listened to the words as she sang the lyrics for him. Hot moisture burned beneath his eyelids for an angry moment at the thought of losing all of this a second time. But considering what happened before, he knew that he had to find out his true nature before he could rest easy about living.

Their return to the ship that night was quiet. Brother made no apologies for having baited Tidus into the race, and Tidus was in no mood to tolerate being Brother's busboy; so they kept to their separate corners the rest of the evening. Buddy and Shinra had managed to salvage the hover bike from the ocean, but they ended up paying damages anyway because the owner didn't think they could repair it well enough for him to use again. Since they had to pay for it, reconstructing the hover bike for their own purposes became their new project, ... after the trip to Guadosalam and Vegnagun's former chamber under Bevelle.

))((

The next day, Tidus awoke stiff and sore due to his injuries from the crash. Yuna cast another cure spell on him to ease his discomfort so that they could finish their journey. Then, the hikers walked from where they stopped in the Moonflow to the shoopuff ferry. The stillness of the morning, with the mist rising off of the water, seemed to echo the stillness of their conversation, as the large, elephant-like creature with the coiled nose gently trod across the river with them in the caravan seat on its back. When it reached the shore of the south bank, it obediently stopped b to lower the passengers to the ground on the lift that the hypello operated. From there, they continued their hike down the forest-lined road to Guadosalam, holding a sober realization of what they might face there.

They were attacked by bandits along the way, as usual. The area was well-known for its outlaw gangs, but the ambush proved to be unsuccessful. Tidus was amazed to discover that the result plate actually did form a magical shield within the weave of his Zanarkand uniform to deflect some of the hits he had taken, for its first battle test. He was glad to have Chappu's sword back for just such an occasion, and he had no problem remembering how to use its magic to send waves of stinging salt water into his attacker's eyes before delivering his strikes. Tidus had been surprised to watch Yuna whip out her saber and fight back right alongside him. She would have never done that two years ago. Between the four of them, the bandits met their match and took off running into the woods without having achieved anything. In fact, one of the bandits ended up running away in his underwear, after Rikku thought to exact his clothing from him.

"Okay, Rikku, ... I know you like taking money from people that try to rob us, but why did you take the man's clothes?" Paine asked.

The little thief rolled up the items and stuffed them under Tidus's arm. "They're warmer clothes for Tidus to add to his grid, so that he can continue his hike to see Kimahri after he finds out that he's really, really, _really_ here. Kimahri's going to want to see him, you know, and it's cold up there on the mountain. Besides, that guy deserved it for trying to steal from us!" She walked away dusting her hands of the whole matter.

))((

Once they made it inside the safety of the magical guado Tree, Yuna changed from her warrior sphere to her gunner sphere and went straight to the home reserved for the leader of the guado. To her disappointment, the leader of the Leblanc sphere hunters syndicate, answered her knock instead of Tromell Guado. Tidus blinked in surprise. This shapely, blond woman was not at all who he expected to see.

"Well, if it isn't my favorite Dullwings. What brings you here, love?" Leblanc planted her hand on her hip and tried, though not too hard, to appear interested in their visit.

Yuna was in no mood for Leblanc's tart mannerisms, but she forced herself to remain polite. "We're looking for Tromell. Do you know where we can find him?"

"Oh, he's in here ... somewhere." Leblanc waved her hand in an aimless gesture. "We were just moving out, and he was just moving in. We're moving to Kilika so we can be closer to Noojie-Woojie, now that he will be heading the Youth League there."

"Noojie... Woojie?" Tidus crinkled his small nose and tilted his head back slightly to see her better below the hem of the white hood from his yellow shirt.

"Who's this?" Leblanc slapped her razor-sharp fan against Tidus's chest.

"A friend." Yuna found herself not wanting Tidus to meet Leblanc for some reason.

"Oh?" She used her fan to push the hood up away from his eyes, relishing the possibility of having something to tease Yuna about, but something about him looked strangely familiar.

"Please, we need to speak with Master Tromell right away," Yuna urgently insisted.

"Fine. Go ahead and look around for him. Just stay out of my trunks, love." Leblanc opened the door wide and allowed them to enter, intrigued by the young man with them.

"Ah, Lady Yuna." The green-haired leader of the guado people came down the stairs just as they entered his estate. "I am honored by your visit. What is it that has brought you all the way out here to Guadosalam?" He took Yuna's small hand in his large palm and tapped it warmly with his long, slender fingers.

"Master Tromell, is your portal to the Farplane fixed yet?"

He released her hand. "It's only just been fixed, but I think it is stable. Who is it that you wish to seek among the spirits, if you don't mind my asking?"

"We don't wish to seek any spirits. We wish to determine whether one who walks among us is real." She gestured lightly to Tidus.

Leblanc quirked a brow at this news, as her bodyguards Ormi and Logos came to her side.

Tromell approached Tidus. "I remember you. You were one of Lady Yuna's guardians when she was seeking the Final Aeon to defeat Sin, were you not?"

Tidus shifted somewhat nervously under the guado's gaze, as if the man had the power to see right through him already. "Yes."

"What reason do you have to believe you are unsent?"

"Not unsent," Tidus hesitantly corrected him. "I was told two years ago that I was a dream, ... created by the fayth to help defeat Sin. When Sin was defeated, I faded."

The guado's brows rose with interest. "If this is true, how is it you are among us now?"

"I don't know. A friend suggested that the Farplane might hold the answers. Is there a way for me to find out, without fading again?"

Leblanc caught her breath. "I recognize him now! That's Shuyin! He's the one that controlled Vegnagun!" she warned Tromell. Her bodyguards immediately hopped into defensive positions and raised their weapons toward him, much like Gippal had upon first meeting him.

Tidus frowned again at the association, but made no move to draw his sword in his own defense.

"This is not Shuyin," Yuna quickly corrected her. "Tidus had nothing to do with Vegnagun. He only wants to know if he's real so he can live without wondering if he'll fade away again."

Leblanc stepped close to Tidus with a scrutinizing gaze. "How do you know he's not Shuyin in disguise? He possessed Baralai, you know. He even possessed my Noojie once. He's got all kinds of tricks up his fiendish little sleeve."

"Because I know who he is, even if we don't know what he is," Yuna firmly insisted.

))((

Tidus lowered his gaze to the floor. Not a _who_ anymore, but a _what_ ...

"The magic of the spirit world is strong, and there is still much that we do not understand about it," Tromell spoke. "It is possible, I suppose, for an illusion to walk among us, but like the unsent, it would have to collect a large amount of magical energy in order to appear to be real. If he does not know whether he is real or not, then he must also have a substantial sense of identity. In such a case, I would argue that his soul is very real, regardless of the physical form it takes." Tromell turned toward the door. "Come, Yuna. I will see what we can do for your guardian." The leader of the guado led the way out of his estate and walked the path up to the Farplane hidden within the magnificent tree that contained all of Guadosalam.

"This I gotta see," Leblanc muttered to herself and marched after them.

"Right there with ya, Boss." Ormi marched behind her, followed by a skeptical-looking Logos.

Tidus pushed back the hood of his shirt and followed, conscious of the sound of his shoes on the stained-glass in-lays of the tree-root floor. Yuna, Rikku, and Paine followed wordlessly behind him.

"An obvious test to find out your young man's nature would be to have him step directly into the Farplane and stay there a moment. If he is really alive, then nothing will happen of any major consequence. If he is an unsent spirit, the pyre flies holding the semblance of his body together will begin to fade and disperse, revealing the light of the spirit underneath. If he is illusion, then he is made up of magic, and the flow of the magic on the Farplane will probably begin to separate the particles that create his physical form to draw them back into the fold. It would be the reverse of how illusions are created."

Tidus's brows rose with worry as he gazed at the barrier between himself and the mystical sunset landscape beyond it. He had gone in there once before and nothing had happened, ... but he remembered now that Auron could not. Perhaps the fayth had something to do with keeping him safe back then, whereas now ... "If I start to fade, is it possible for someone to pull me back out?"

"For an unsent spirit? No. For an illusion? Who knows?"

"Then, I'm going with him," Yuna declared with quiet determination.

"I don't recommend it, Lady Yuna." The guado disagreed with her decision. "While the Farplane's magic and pyreflies will not harm the living, those who have attempted to explore it beyond our floating pedestal often return to us quite disturbed afterwards about what they thought they saw. It is one thing for a person to allow the pyreflies to reassemble the likeness of a loved one for a few minutes, but it is quite another to actually step into the final resting place of the dead and contact them."

"I've crossed it before. It doesn't frighten me now."

Tidus slipped his hand into hers, touched by her worry, but ashamed that she would risk herself for him. "Yuna -"

She cut off what he intended to say, by simply meeting his gaze.

"Very well, it is your decision, but because of the risk, I would save that as a last resort," Tromell continued.

"Is there another way?" Yuna asked.

"Perhaps. Would you happen to know which of the fayth are responsible for sending him?"

"That's easy - Bahamut. He's the only fayth who has spoken to us about any of this."

"There's a reason only high summoners could commune with the fayth. The enforced bond to the material world, that literally sealed the fayth into stone, made them much more difficult to reach, and much more dangerous when contacted. Someone summoning a fayth had to be able to withstand the trial of the fayth's powers. You being a high summoner yourself, I'm sure you are aware of that. However, if I were you, that is the safer place I would start. Call upon the fayth and ask how it is that your guardian came back to you. If that doesn't work - if the fayth can no longer hear you in their eternal rest - then you can step into the Farplane itself to test his composition. But hold onto something real. It might be enough to ground you in case you start to slip away." Tromell spoke his last two lines directly to Tidus and folded his large hands over one another.

Tidus turned to Yuna with uncertainty and lifted his brows in question. One green eye and one blue eye, both of her eyes seemed to reflect his fear. Did she really want to do this with him?

"I'm ready when you are," she assured his unspoken doubt.

"Maybe we could all make a chain by holding hands." Rikku stepped forward and looked expectantly into her friends' faces, then turned to face Tromell. "Would that help ground him any better?"

"You could try. It is life that keeps the troubled dead here among us sometimes," the guado answered her.

"Okay." Tidus hesitantly drew a breath and reached for Rikku's hand. He was ready to get this over with.

Yuna nodded her head, locked her fingers between his, and took Paine's hand. Paine took Rikku's other hand, forming a circle. Then, as a group, they slowly walked through the transparent portal onto the balcony above the Farplane and stopped by the edge.

It was as beautiful as Tidus remembered it. It felt like he was looking down over an expansive sea of clouds that swept toward a giant waterfall, without knowing how far down the drop was on the other side. All of the mist from the waterfall flowed into a distant flower-filled glen. Pyreflies, animate particles of magic itself, swirled and floated in an array of light and color rising out of the mist, and though the colors reminded him of the pinks and oranges of the sun, it was the moon that rose over the waters, between the distant, blue-green pillars of glowing magic.

))((

Yuna looked out over the misty glen and tried to visualize the large, fearsome face of her mighty aeon friend, Bahamut. Then, she tried to remember him as the small boy that his fayth really was. "Bahamut? Can you hear me?"

The sunset glen full of pyreflies made no effort to respond.

"Bahamut, ... we need to talk to you."

Only silence answered her pleas.

"Bahamut," Tidus spoke up, lending his own voice to his supposed creator. "I need to know if it's real this time." When there was still no response, Tidus impatiently stepped toward the edge and considered jumping over it. The rest of the circle followed, holding tightly to him. "Bahamut!" He felt strange in this place - cold and thin. And when he looked down at his hands, to his horror, he saw they were fading. "No," he whispered to himself with sorrowful eyes and shook his head. "No, this can't be happening."

"Don't let go!" Yuna clutched his hand tighter. She began tugging him back toward the barrier. "Hang on, we're getting you out of here!"

"Yuna! Look out!" Paine cried out in sudden warning, torn between continuing to hold hands and drawing her sword.

When Yuna turned to see what had alarmed her friend, she was shocked. "Shuyin!"

"Don't break the circle! Don't break the circle!" Rikku reminded Paine, gripping her hand to prevent her from drawing her sword. "We can't let him have Tidus! We have to keep Tidus here!" The small thief tightened her grip on Tidus's hand as well, even though it looked like Shuyin's.

Paine's eyes narrowed on the ghost that now stood among them. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"Aha! I told you he was behind this!" Leblanc opened her steel-bladed fan in alarm, but held her ground cautiously, along with her two sidekicks. Her troop had followed the guado into the portal behind them. "Persistent little bugger, isn't he?"

"Yuna," Shuyin spoke to her through his own voice layered over Tidus's.

Yuna's eyes darkened with an expression Paine and Rikku had never seen on her before. "Give him back," she quietly warned.

"Come to Zanarkand," his multi-layered voice continued.

Yuna dared to break the circle, releasing Paine's hand to reach for her gun. She placed the nose of the weapon right under Shuyin's chin, but she refused to let go of his hand. "_Give him back_!" she demanded.

"Yunie, no!" Rikku whimpered in desperation. "You'll kill Tidus, too!"

Yuna's hand trembled at the realization, but she held her position and lifted her chin, as if daring Shuyin to call her bluff. "We tried to help you, instead of destroying you." Her demand turned into a plea. "Let him go."

Shuyin put a hand to Yuna's gun to point it safely away from his borrowed body. "I can't speak freely here without endangering him. Come to Zanarkand." He said no more before fading from their presence, leaving Tidus in his place.

Yuna wasted no time in dragging Tidus back to the barrier to get him out of the magical glen as fast as possible.

))((

Once they were outside the Farplane again, Tidus shuddered feverishly and dropped to his knees. Everyone seemed to move at once to catch him, too late. Dizzy, he leaned forward, palms to the floor, and stared at his hands once more. They were solid now, but... "I started to fade."

"No. It wasn't you." Yuna quickly slipped her gun back into her holster to free both hands again. "Shuyin claimed your body."

He had not realized it. This utterly bewildered him. "Why?"

Yuna shook her head, unwilling to say anything to him about the message Shuyin left in his wake.

Something warm and wet dripped onto his hand, and Tidus lifted his chin to see another tear trickle down her cheek. Sitting back on his heels, he cupped her face in his hands and gently used his thumb to brush it away, then he drew her into his arms. "I have to speak with him. I have to go to Zanarkand."

"No." She barely found voice to protest. "You're real. Your soul is real. We know enough! Please don't go!"

Tidus could not honestly say whether he had faded, or whether he was just seeing Shuyin's ghostly hands instead of his own.

Paine and Rikku exchanged looks of worry.

Tromell folded his hands in the long sleeves of his jacket and his face drew into a concerned expression. "I've never seen a spirit take someone else's body like that before. Zanarkand itself is probably not a threat to him, however that spirit ..."

"Shuyin's shadow was able to possess people - many people all at once. He was strong and dangerous, but I thought we had taken care of him." Paine frowned at what his return could mean.

Yuna collapsed by Tidus's side, hugging him and freely letting her tears flow at the fright of nearly losing him to Shuyin's possession.

Leblanc folded her fan and tapped it against her chin, then cautiously approached the Farplane's barrier again to be sure that the monster behind Vegnagun was really gone.


	8. Chapter 8: Journey North

Chapter 8: Journey North

Tidus sat cross-legged on the sofa, staring down at the new marble-sized sphere in his grid. Inside of it was the image of a long-sleeved robe from Guadosalam imbued with more magic than he would ever be able to cast on his own. But then, maybe he was the very essence of magic himself - illusion, dream, a fabrication beyond reality. Yet he could touch, see, hear, ... feel and think. It was hard to comprehend the paradoxes of his existence.

"Why are you sitting here doing nothing when I told you to clean the bathrooms?" Brother called up to him from the lower deck of the cabin.

Tidus looked up from his grid, but then looked back down, making no move to get up and do his chores.

Brother growled at the lack of response and marched up the steps to stand before him. "Are you defying me?"

"No, I'm ignoring you," Tidus blandly corrected.

"You can't ignore me. I make myself un-ignorable."

Tidus looked up with a pinched expression. "Is that even a word?"

Brother dramatically waved his arms. "Well, excuuuuuse me if I don't speak your language as fluently as Rikku. _Syopa oui cruimt dno du maynh Al Bhed cusa desa_."

Tidus tucked the grid into his pocket, placed his hands behind his head, and leaned back to watch the rain pour down the window panels overhead as the airship entered the Thunder Plains. "Whatever."

Brother straightened and frowned at this strange response, then bent over Tidus with knitted brows. "Goldilocks is moping? Yuna is moping. Hm, ... What did you say to Yuna?"

Tidus's eyes shifted toward him. "What do you mean?"

"She's been sad all day since you asked to go to Zanarkand Ruins. You must have done something to make her upset."

"Isn't it obvious? She doesn't want me to go to Zanarkand."

"Then you should not go."

"I have to."

"Yuna doesn't want you to go, so you should not go." Brother made a dramatic slashing gesture with his hands. "Very simple."

"It's not that simple, and it's not Yuna's decision. In fact, maybe it's best that she not go with me. It will be difficult to say goodbye again, if it comes to that."

"You are leaving again?" Brother asked in an incredulous tone, slapping his hands to his head.

"I don't know what _you're_ so upset about. You should be glad to see me go."

Brother put his hands over his face and turned away. He struggled with himself for a moment, sighed, and then turned back around to sit on the chair facing Tidus. "I would be glad to see you go, except that I know it would break Yuna's heart." He put his hands over his chest. "Yuna would do anything to keep you here, and I would do anything for Yuna. So, I ask you not to leave her again."

"But that's just it," Tidus complained. "I can't do anything about _not_ leaving, unless I know more about how to _stay_." He paused, turned around on the sofa, and rose to his knees to stare out the window at the storm clouds and lightning. "They shouldn't have sent me back, if I'm just going to hurt her with another goodbye."

"Yuna does not think that way. Yuna would rather have a few good memories than to have not any memories at all." Brother stood and frowned at Tidus. "Yuna's up on deck. Go talk to her."

Tidus blinked in surprise. "Up on deck? In this weather? Is she insane?"

"That's an order! Go!" Brother stopped himself and softened his voice. "I mean, please, ... go talk to her." Brother sighed heavily and buried his face in his hands. "She loves you so very much."

Tidus stared at his supposed rival for a long, silent moment. Then, he looked out the window at the raging storm. "This is crazy," he finally muttered to himself and left for the loft's stairs.

"Tidus," Brother called again.

He stopped and looked up at him.

"I'm ... I shouldn't have challenged you to the race. I did not mean for you to get hurt."

Tidus nodded in acceptance of Brother's apology and headed out of the cabin to the lift. When the lift opened to the deck, sure enough, he found Yuna sitting, curled into a ball, on the stairs inside the airship's open hatch. Approaching from behind, he knelt to fold his arms over her shoulders, as he had when they parted - as he faded away. This time, however, there was contact and warmth, instead of numb emptiness. "What are you doing up here?"

Yuna placed her cold hands over his warm forearms. "Listening to the sound of the rain on the roof. It's comforting somehow."

Tidus gazed past her shoulder to the dark, electrical clouds rumbling around them and the dance of the raindrops on the newly waxed surface of the Celsius. "I guess ... I haven't been acting very grateful for being given a second chance to be with you. I won't go, if you don't want me to."

"People define themselves by where they come from, whether it's a place, or a time, or a personal history. You don't have any of those things, really. Do you?"

"My memories are vague. The only ones that really stand out to me are of my old man calling me a crybaby, my mom crying because he left, the game that I was playing when Sin crashed the party, ... and this place. I used to believe I had a life before coming here, but now I realize it's too full of holes - holes that feel as big as those holes in the temples."

"Then we must find your history and fix those holes. We are sphere hunters; we must make it our mission to find your sphere." Yuna looked over her shoulder and turned to face him with a sad smile. "I'm sorry for being selfish. I tried to keep Shuyin's message from you, but somehow you heard it anyway. That means it was meant to be. We will go to Zanarkand, ... together."

He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against hers. "You don't have to smile about it, if you don't want to."

Yuna blinked away her tears and kissed his forehead. "It's a good thing to find out who we really are, no matter how painful it can be sometimes. That is eventually worth smiling about." Yuna took a moment to gather her inner strength, then stood and coaxed him to stand with her. "We should start here, in the Thunder Plains, so you can finish retracing your steps. You have real memories here, even if not in the dream. You deserve a chance to revisit them, just like I did. It won't be the same if we just drop you off over the ruins in Zanarkand."

Tidus drew a breath of relief and nodded. "Thank you."

))((

Not long afterwards, the airship lowered itself over the barren Thunder Plains, and Tidus and the Gullwings disembarked for their journey on foot once more.

"I sure wish you'd picked a better place to get off at," Paine sourly commented, pulling her rain hood low over her eyes. "Couldn't you have been inspired to hoof it again in the Calm Lands?"

"Inspiration strikes when you least expect it." As lightning struck a nearby rod tower, he pulled his thick guado robe around himself and likewise pulled his hood over his eyes. The magic of the robes would keep them warm and lightning-proof while they crossed the treacherous grounds.

"I'm sure glad I got over my fear of thunder, or I'd really be hating you right now," Rikku added. "Hey, is that a cave over there? If the lightning gets heavy, maybe we can -"

"No!" Paine and Yuna both rejected what she was going to suggest.

Tidus figured there was a story behind their reaction, but decided it would be better to ask about it later. "We've got company," he warned as three blue-and-gold skinned drakes crawled from behind the rocks. He reached to his back for his sword, but then cursed himself for forgetting to strap the weapon _outside_ of the robe.

One of the drakes lunged for him and caught his shoulder in its fiery maw, but its teeth seared into the magical barrier that protected him, sparing him considerable burns. The pain of the bite, however, was still agonizing. Tidus reached a hand to the drake's vice-like head and a powerful ice spell frosted and pierced the large creature's head and neck with sharp shards, killing it on the spot. He looked at his hand in disbelief, then turned around to see that the girls had already neatly dispatched one of the other two threats.

Rikku hopped onto the remaining creature's back and dug her double daggers into its scales. "What ya got under here? Ooh! Drake scales are good alchemy reagents!"

"Just stab it, already!" Paine impatiently yelled at her.

The thief withdrew the blades and then punched them down into its shoulders again. As the drake roared its fury and whipped its neck around to pluck the pest from its wounds, Yuna fired a shot at it from her magus gun that spread a sheen of magic over its scaly hide and dropped it to its knees in a weakened condition. Paine then moved in with one powerful slash and opened the drake's throat. It fell into a lifeless heap as Rikku cut away a handful of scales and tucked them into the pouches at her hips.

"We did it, woo-woo-woo-woo-woo; we did it, yeh-yeh-yeh-yeh-yeh," Rikku sang as she hopped from the carcass and did a little victory dance. "Uh-huh-uh-huh-uh-huh."

Paine gave the thief a tolerant sigh, and then she looked to Tidus. "Come on, Goldilocks." She marched confidently ahead of him, her cloak swirling behind her in the storm wind as she pulled the hood low to keep the rain from her face. "You think I want to stay out here in this mess forever just so you can remember how glorious it once was?" she called back to him.

Tidus would have joined Rikku in her victory dance, but he was too stunned. He blinked at the dead drakes once more, and then his own hand, which glowed with a strange white luminescence now. "The grid?" he asked Yuna, wondering where the magic had come from.

"Mh. Shinra must have set your grid so you could do black magic with the guado robe. I've never seen so much power come from one spell like that before, though. You might be stronger with magic than you think because of ..." She hesitated to admit what might still be true. "Because of what you are."

"Illusionary magic from a dream." It felt like defeat to say such a thing.

Yuna gave a sad nod.

Tidus winced at the pain in his mauled shoulder as he wrapped his robe further around himself and followed behind Paine and Rikku, all the while wondering. Yuna made him pause long enough to allow her to cast a cure spell on the wounded shoulder, but other than that, they kept up their pace through the entire long strip of stormy territory. By nightfall they had reached the end of the Thunder Plains. There, they checked in with the airship to change into warm, dry clothing and get some sleep.

))((

The next morning, they were ready to go again and Buddy deposited them at the edge of Macalania Forest.

"The sun's shining through the trees." Tidus shielded his eyes with his hand, and then lowered the visor of his Luca cap. "What's happening to the forest? It was always dark as night in here."

"It's fading," Rikku sadly informed him.

"It's nearly empty of all life now, except for the normal trees and a few fiends." Yuna led the way down the side path toward the groves and to the spring where he had first kissed her.

"What could cause an entire forest to fade?" he asked.

"Macalania's magic water and crystals came from the fayth in its temple." Paine met Tidus's gaze, leaving him to figure out the rest.

He lowered his eyes to the swirling pattern of tree roots that still laced the ground in the groves, similar to Guadosalam. "I guess I can relate." He followed the root patterns to the lake to stand beside Yuna and stood in silence trying to understand all the sacrifices of their chess game with Sin.

Rikku tapped Paine on the shoulder and gestured that they should give them a moment alone.

"Uh, it's muggy in here. We'll be waiting at the crossroads to Bevelle," Paine offered as a weak excuse for their departure.

Yuna smiled to Rikku, who gave her a sly wink and a grin before scuttling out of sight. "They think they're doing us a favor," she whispered to Tidus, as she stepped forward to stare at the clear water that reflected the treetops, and now the sky above. "This place is special to me, though. The last time I came here, I couldn't bear the thought of it changing and disappearing. I told myself I wasn't ready for this place to become a memory yet. But now, ... I think I can let it go."

"The last time I came through here, you were thinking you would never come back from the Final Summoning." He gave a cynical snort. "Never would have imagined that the one not coming back would be me."

"It wasn't fair. I refused the Final Aeon because I didn't want to lose you. But I ended up losing you anyway."

"By accepting the Final Aeon, everyone would have been lost," he reminded her. "You made the right decision, Yuna. Maybe that's why they sent me back - to let you know that you didn't sacrifice me. It's just how it needed to be. Ending the fayth's summoning was the only way to defeat Sin and break Yevon's power over Spira."

Yuna supposed he was right. She studied his solemn expression for a moment, but then smiled slyly to herself and stepped forward. "Tidus." She placed a firm hand on his right shoulder, and then his left, turning him rather abruptly to face her. Then, she stood on her tiptoes and boldly kissed him.

After a long moment, when she pulled away, a small smirk touched Tidus's lips. "Are you mocking me?"

Yuna giggled lightly.

"You are - you're mocking me." He pulled his shoulders away from her. "See if I ever try to comfort you the next time you're sad."

Yuna giggled again and reached toward him, but he batted her hands away.

"Naaai - don't touch me," he half-laughed as he backed away and blocked her hands. "You made me fumble a pass that hit me in the head. You dropped me instead of carrying me when I cut my leg. And now you're mocking me."

"It made you laugh." She tried to get close to him again.

"Are you kidding? I'm just being a good sport to put up with all this abuse that you're sending my way." He stepped back and blocked her hands again.

Rikku crept close to the opening of the grove and peered through some branches. "Eh?" She straightened in confusion. "Why is Tidus keeping Yuna at arm's length and pushing her away?" A hand suddenly clamped down on her shoulder making her jump, and Paine dragged her back toward Bevelle. "Wait - it just got interesting," she whined as she was pulled away. "Oh, poop!"

Tidus chuckled lightly at what he caught happening behind Yuna as she finally caught his hands. Lowering his defenses, he drew a breath and took one last look around at the large, twisted trees. "Maybe whatever new forest appears here will be better than the old one."

Yuna smiled and slipped her arm around his. "Maybe." Together they turned and walked away, leaving their old memories behind with the fading crystal trees. Leaving the grove, they turned down the road where Paine and Rikku stood waiting for them.

"Should we stop in at Bevelle?" Paine asked as they rejoined at the crossroads.

"No. We can come back to Bevelle to inspect its path to the Farplane after we've been to Zanarkand," Yuna answered. "Let's go ahead into the Calm Lands. They've set up a carnival there now," she informed Tidus.

"Really?" He was surprised to hear that. "Well, I guess there's no better place to do it. It's out in the middle of nowhere."

"Oh, and remember Clasko? He's converted that fiend cavern into a chocobo ranch."

Tidus snorted with mild laugh. "Classic." It was then that he noticed Rikku staring at him with a rather odd expression. "_What_?"

"Nothing." She flashed a dimpled grin of innocence.

"I caught her spying on you," Paine tattled.

"Oh, I saw her spying on us."

Rikku drew back in defense. "I wasn't spying. I was checking on Yunie. Those roots are slippery, and ... she might have fallen in, and ... _why wouldn't you let her kiss you_?" she demanded of Tidus. "Shame on you!"

"Shame on _me_? I didn't do anything."

"Exactly! The most romantic place in all of Spira, and you push her away," she scolded. "What a waste of an opportunity. Honestly!" The thief threw up her hands in disgust. "First Brother and now you. Do I have do all the planning around here for you guys?" She indignantly marched ahead.

"Well, you've done it now," Paine warned. "Rikku might make plans for your love life. Yep, I'd be afraid, if I were you - very afraid." She hefted her sword onto her shoulder and strode ahead to catch up to Rikku.

Tidus stood with a stupefied expression wondering what had just happened here, but Yuna, at least, was greatly amused.

The party crossed over the Calm Lands and stopped long enough to browse the carnival events, buy some sweets at the food stand, and drop in on Clasko's chocobo ranch. They chatted with him a short time before heading down the gorge and across the bridge toward the pass through Mt. Gagazet. Tidus paused for a moment to look back at the temple, wondering if it had changed on the inside at all, but then decided seeing it from the outside was good enough to bring back the memories he had made there.

))((

Up the mountain and into the snow, they found themselves wrapping their guado cloaks more tightly around themselves to keep out the forever-winter chill of the high region. "Kimahri!" Yuna called out to the large blue ronso as they came near to the entrance of the sacred mountain. She broke into a run and gave him the biggest hug she could muster. "Look who came back, Kimahri!"

"Tidus." The ronso was pleased to see him, and his lion-like lips curled into a snarling expression that bared his fangs.

Tidus knew the beast-man was trying to smile, or he would have mistaken the expression to mean he was going to be dinner. "Scary," he muttered and shook his head as he received a suffocating hug.

"Sphere helped Yuna find Tidus in cage?" Kimahri asked.

"Well, not exactly," Yuna answered. "But if you had not given us the sphere, I don't know that I would have ever found him again. When Rikku brought it to me, I was feeling rather lost. The new factions all wanted me to support their agendas, but I didn't want to join any of them. I had already fulfilled the one purpose I'd trained for all my life as a summoner, so I guess I didn't feel very useful any more. It was that sphere that inspired me to try something different and become a sphere hunter. And that changed everything for me, Kimahri. So, thank you." She gave him another hug.

"Kimahri could sense something important about that sphere. Sphere was one of elder treasures, but Kimahri knew Yuna should have it. But, ... what did Tidus do to be put in cage?" The snarl reappeared on the ronso's face.

Tidus quirked a brow at Kimahri's attempt to tease him. "I hate to disappoint you, big guy, but I didn't do anything. That wasn't me in the cage."

"It was Shuyin - the guy who stole Vegnagun," Rikku explained. "But we wouldn't have even known about that if not for the sphere, so it's important in more ways than one."

"Hmm. Not familiar with that name." Kimahri had not realized the connection. "But sphere was certainly destined to be Yuna's, if it helped her find her Tidus. Kimahri heard about Yuna's battle with the big machina under Bevelle. Proud day for Yuna, like when we defeated Sin."

"Thanks, Kimahri." Considering that the large, blue, lion-like creature had raised her in her father's absence, he was like a second father to her. She was pleased when she made him proud. "Well, we can't stay long. We're on our way to Zanarkand."

"Tidus returned. Did fayth come back?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Tidus admitted.

"Yuna and friends broke the cycle of Sin and destroyed ancient powerful weapon, but maybe Spira is not completely free yet. Kimahri has faith in Yuna and her friends to find the answers." The Ronso folded his massive arms over his big, blue chest and twitched his tail with the pride.

))((

The fiends on the mountain trails toward Zanarkand were the worst that they encountered on their journey. The party had to cast fire spells onto their weapons in order to more quickly cut through the well-insulated predators, natural and unnatural. The temperature alone began to take a toll on their resistance, but the cuts and bruises they endured from multiple ambushes of starving fiends were the driving factor in Rikku's whining to take a break in the hot springs. It didn't take much persuading to convince the others to agree with her. Wearily, the quartet made their way up the treacherous rocks and through the hidden caves to the steaming pools.

"Saaaa, I can't move another inch. That trail is too steep." Rikku was aching so badly to soak in the water that she approached the pool and immediately began stripping down to her underclothing.

"My back is killing me." Paine stretched and pulled her garment grid from her pocket, to study it for a moment.

"It won't hurt us to stop in here for an hour or so." Yuna removed her guado cloak and folded it over her arm. "Zanarkand's just around the corner and down the mountain. The worst part of the journey should be over."

Tidus set the tip of Caladbolg down on the rock floor and rested his hands on its hilt as he leaned against the cavern wall and rolled his sore neck toward his shoulders. "As long as we make it to the outskirts of Zanarkand by nightfall we should be okay."

At the sound of his voice, Rikku suddenly snapped out of her tired daze. She gave a short, shrill screech, snatched up her clothing, and whirled to give him a firm smack. "What are you still doing in here?" she yelled at him.

"Warming up like you guys," he countered, shielding himself from another smack.

"You're supposed to wait outside!"

"Nobody told me to wait outside. It's freezing out there," he argued.

Paine grabbed him by the ear and led him to the cavern entrance.

"Atch! Hey! She's the one that started undressing! Why is everyone mad at me?" He pulled away as soon as they were at the entrance of the cavern.

"Because you didn't take a hint and leave," she told him with a frown.

"_What hint_?" He spread his arms in dismay. He could still hear Rikku shouting something incomprehensible at him in Al Bhed from within the cave.

Yuna stepped from behind Paine and gave him a hug. "You'll get a turn. We promise. Just stand watch for us, please?"

Tidus sighed with disgust.

"You're such a good -"

"- sport. Yeah, yeah, I know. Go soak in the nice, hot water while I sit out here and ... count snowflakes."

Yuna tapped his cold, red nose with her gloved finger. "Think warm thoughts, ... but no peeking." She gave him a smile that nearly squinted her eyes shut and turned to walk back to the hot springs with Paine.

Tidus groaned to himself and found a flat wall near the cave entrance. Propping Caladbolg between his knees and crossing his arms over his chest, he slid his back all the way down the wall until he was sitting slouched on the cold, hard ground. As he stared at the falling snow, he began to hear laughter and splashes echoing from within the cavern. Tidus scowled deeply, hugged his robe closer to his body, and started mumbling to himself about non-existent hints.

Several hours later, when they reached the mountain's summit, the four of them stood in the harsh winds for a long, quiet moment and looked down upon the the Lost City of Zanarkand below them. Tidus gazed with apprehension at the familiar, yet unfamiliar, city that had fallen a thousand years ago, though in his own memories it was full of life. When he was ready, Tidus took the first steps down the sloping road to the crumbled ruins. Everyone else somberly followed.


	9. Chapter 9: Memory of Light Waves

Chapter 9: Memory of Light Waves

Tidus felt as if he were walking in a fog, as he followed his memories of Zanarkand down the broken highways and under the crumbled arches. He knew these places - could still see the people. Yuna, noticing the rather distant look in his eyes, reached for his hand to remind him that he wasn't alone. His fingers clasped tightly within hers, he continued toward the doors of the temple, where a tall man with brown hair and bright blue robes stood waiting for them.

"Isaaru." Yuna greeted him with a bow. "Thank you for answering our com sphere call from the ship."

"As the guardian of the temple at Zanarkand, I cannot deny a request of this nature to you, Lady Yuna."

He glanced to Tidus. "I hope you find what you're looking for in there. And I hope that whatever is looking for trouble, doesn't find you." He cautiously pulled on the heavy, iron door to open it for them. He then gave them a formal Yevon bow and stepped aside for them to pass.

Still in his dark knight armor, Tidus drew Caladbolg from the sheath behind his shoulder blades and proceeded to flank left with caution. Paine had copied his sphere choice and moved to the right, sandwiching black-mage Rikku and white-mage Yuna safely between them. They scanned every corner of the ancient temple for anything that looked like it was trying to take the shape of a fiend. If Shuyin wanted to fight again, they were prepared.

Monkeys that had taken up residence in the ruins scattered out of their way as they passed through the great hall and into the corridor leading to the stairs. They could swear that they saw faces appearing and disappearing in the swirling pyreflies that swarmed freely over the haunted domain, as if it were the Farplane. Still, nothing provoked them as they continued toward the back into the Cloister of Trials. It was still unlocked, from the last time that Yuna and her guardians passed through here, so all they had to do was step on the lift and descend to the Chamber of the Fayth. They walked to the tiny alcove at the back and crossed over the cracked node in the center of the floor. This was where Yuna had faced her greatest challenge - the unsent spirit of Lady Yunalesca, keeper of the spell that summoned the Final Aeon.

"I just realized something," Yuna spoke, breaking the heavy silence that had settled on everyone's nerves. "This temple has no hole into the Farplane like the others."

"Why would this temple be spared?" Paine questioned.

"I'm not sure, unless it has something to do with the fact that we never agreed to summon the Final Aeon," Yuna guessed. The stone still lay beneath their feet, where the outline, but not the body, of Lord Zaon's fayth remained etched. "Maybe Lady Yunalesca is the one who restarted the dream."

Rikku crouched over the long, large crack in the tomb's transparent shield. "But she wasn't a fayth. She was just an unsent summoner. And she wouldn't bring Tidus back because she would have gladly sealed him into the body of the Final Aeon two years ago." Rikku stood and drew in a breath of dread. "Maybe she brought him back so she could turn him into an aeon anyway to get revenge for us turning her down so he could become the next Sin like his father Jecht and then we'd all be dead like we were supposed to die in the first place summoning the Final Aeon two years ago the way that Auron did when he and Jecht and Braska were here!"

"How did you just say that in one breath?" Tidus shifted his stance. "Even I'd have to come up for air in that sentence."

"Over there." Paine pointed to the corner where a cluster of pyreflies rose around the empty ledge through the open door to the Chamber of the Fayth. They changed colors like a neon nebula growing whiter and brighter as they gathered. A fiend was forming.

Tidus readied his sword and reached for Yuna's hand. "Whatever happens, don't let go of me."

His request caught Yuna by surprise at first. "You should be safe here." In spite of the abundant pyreflies and frequent hauntings, this place did not exist on the plane of magic, as the Farplane did.

"I wouldn't call any meeting with Shuyin 'safe'," Paine answered for him. One glance from the stoic, silver-haired woman was all it took to remind Yuna of this spirit's strong ability to possess others. Shuyin was the real danger here, and he had already claimed Tidus once. Shuyin was the reason she had feared him coming back to Zanarkand.

"It's him," Rikku nervously reported as the fiend continued coalescing amid the pyreflies, its light taking on the familiar shape of a young man with golden blond hair and deep blue eyes.

Tidus scowled and tightened his grip on his weapon as he crouched, ready to jump forward and strike at any given moment. This was the monster that had nearly destroyed Spira. This was the monster that had nearly destroyed Paine's friends. This was the monster that could have killed Yuna. This was the monster that nearly claimed him. Yet this monster looked so much like himself.

Shuyin smiled warmly at them. "You came." Tucking hands behind his back, he came forward slowly with an easy stride, as if to purposefully contradict Paine's statement about what a threat he was. Everyone snapped their weapons toward him in unison with distrust, warning him to keep his distance. Shuyin glanced at the weapons with reserve, but without worry. "I didn't come to fight you. I came because I owe a debt to you, Lady Yuna. You were seeking answers to questions about _him_." He cast a glance toward Tidus. "Perhaps, I can help."

"You are not one of the fayth," Yuna voiced her skepticism. While she had found it in her heart to sympathize with him concerning Lenne and Vegnagun, she was wary of him now, after what he did to Tidus in Guadosalam's Farplane portal.

"You're right; I'm not." He sighed as if he had a million different things to say, but his time and presence in the material world were very limited now. Shuyin had trouble finding words for a moment, then he quietly told himself, "Begin at the beginning." He drew a breath, turned his back to the weapons pointed at him, and began to pace as he spoke.

"A thousand years ago when I lived in this city, I was a blitzball player, like my old man before me. We didn't get along too well because I could never live up to his expectations. He was a famously talented, cold-hearted drunk. Then, one day, he left my mother and me without a trace. It broke her heart and filled me with resentment." He stopped pacing and looked toward them. "Sound familiar?"

Yuna and Rikku, knowing what they did about Tidus's family, were stunned.

Tidus's brows knit sharply in anger thinking Shuyin was mocking him. "That's not funny."

"No, it wasn't," Shuyin agreed, matching Tidus's expression almost exactly. "But I tried not to let it drag me down too much, you know?" His anger lightened. "I had a great girlfriend, and I had my new career to think about." Shuyin lifted his gaze to the mysterious star-scape overhead in the chamber. "Zanarkand, at that time, was one of the most prosperous cities in all of Spira, but even with all of our state of the art technologies, we preferred the use of magic over machina. Magic, however, because of its mystery, was highly frowned upon by Bevelle, who was more closely allied to the Founders."

"The Founders?" Paine skeptically latched onto the unfamiliar faction name.

"They were the founders of Spira from a distant land. They supplied us with export items and people. We supplied them with raw goods, obeyed their laws, and made them rich. That's how the imperial colony thing works, right?"

Yuna blinked at this surprising bit of forgotten history. "Spira was a colony of a larger civilization? But there are no other land masses on this planet. That means, ... we were the colony of another world?"

"Another world that had a strong mistrust for magic." Shuyin continued. "Bevelle and the Founders began to feel threatened by Zanarkand's prominent use of it. The Founders eventually became so paranoid about what might happen if we were to become hostile, that they began helping Bevelle increase their machina weapon production, ... just a show of might to keep Zanarkand in line. But when Zanarkand declared that it no longer wanted to be part of the Founders' empire, they gave the order for Bevelle to destroy us. Their attack on Zanarkand came as a complete surprise and destroyed a major portion of it, killing many people. But it backfired. After that, Zanarkand's leaders were no longer willing to submit to Bevelle's authority in the name of the Founders. War was inevitable." He paused. "Are you with me so far?"

"That's when the battle in the Calm Lands occurred." Yuna followed his time line, based on what sketchy bit of history she had learned from the teachings of Yevon at the temple. It was hard to believe that summoning was once so mistrusted in Bevelle, considering how important it became to the Maesters of Yevon after Sin came.

Shuyin met her gaze and continued. "High Summoner Yu Yevon ordered all of our warriors and summoners to the front lines of battle."

"Lenne included," she inserted.

Shuyin nodded. "I didn't want her to go, but there was nothing I could do about it. When I woke after the war in the Calm Lands, I was told she was taken captive and held in Bevelle. And it looked like the army of Bevelle was heading back to Zanarkand to finish it off. So, I had to help her escape and try to stop them. While I was looking for her, I found Vegnagun, and I thought, if I could use it to free her, or destroy Bevelle's army before it reached Zanarkand again ... But they caught me and held me in confinement."

"Kimahri's sphere!" Rikku recognized the event.

"A friend of mine helped bust me out of there. I found Lenne's holding cell and freed her, but those halls all looked alike. We got lost trying to find a way out, ... and there it was again. So, I decided to try one more time, while I had the chance. I told Lenne to stay at the door and watch for guards because I didn't want her to get hurt if something went wrong. She worried that I wouldn't know how to operate it, but I told her I could handle it." He smiled briefly thinking of the last time she smiled at him, then he closed his eyes for a moment, reliving the horrific memory of what happened next.

"I checked over my shoulder to Lenne's position by the door one last time before entering the robo-shell and climbing the ladder past the gun's inner workings to the control center at the head. Because this machina was intelligent, because I had a music background, and because I had been able to spend a few minutes with it before getting caught, I was able to figure out how to open the gun's laser barrel this time. I began charging the gun's energy, and Vegnagun willingly aided me in automating as many controls as it could."

Yuna folded her white mage wand to her chest as memories from a thousand years past washed over his expression. "I saw what happened in my dreams. She tried to stop you, but ..."

"Footsteps ... The same thundering footsteps that had chased us through those endless halls before were coming. Lenne heard them, too. I left Vegnagun to go to her, but they cut off our escape. I ended up destroying the only person that I felt was worth saving." Shuyin slowly opened his sad eyes once more. "I hated myself. But then I hated Bevelle, Yevon, and Zanarkand, too. None of them deserved to live because their fighting led to senseless deaths."

"It wasn't your call to make, and that doesn't excuse what you did," Paine coldly replied. "Are you aware of how many people died, or nearly died, because of _you_?"

"Yes. I know the face of every victim in the Farplane. My rage blinded me for a thousand years, but I see more clearly now. I realize that I owe a great debt," Shuyin answered in quiet apology, his dark blue eyes boldly meeting hers as he accepted her resentment and criticism. "But there is no punishment I can endure, or miracle I can perform, that will give back the lives that I took. So I offer to help in the only way that I can now."

"I don't understand what any of this has to do with me," Tidus spoke, feeling angry and confused. He still refused to lower his sword to the dangerous apparition just yet.

"I was getting to that." Shuyin took a few steps closer to speak directly to him. "In a truly selfish effort to defend the city at all costs, our _illustrious_ leader sacrificed the lives of Zanarkand's remaining survivors, so he could use their souls to power his own defenses. They became the fayth, and he was protected by his new aeon-armor - Sin. It was good for him, I guess, because he became virtually indestructible, but it turned Zanarkand into a city of the dead. He got his revenge on Bevelle, and then summoned the fayth to create the dream - an eternal Zanarkand in the Farplane, built on real memories of real people." Shuyin pointed at Tidus. "That's where you come in."

As Tidus stared into the face of the apparition, he couldn't help but feel as if he were staring at his reflection on some kind of watery surface. He considered again their identical family backgrounds and wave of nauseating dread washed over him. "Don't tell me I'm you."

"No. You're not me." Shuyin's eyes seemed to smile back at him, though. "Lenne's little brother was only a child at the time of his death. He used to live near me and hang out at all my games. He was really smart, too. Even at his age, it was clear that his magic was strong enough to earn him the title of summoner someday. He was a typical pest sometimes, but he was good kid." Shuyin shrugged at the fond memory. "A few years ago, his spirit managed to find me, and he asked me if I would do things differently if I had a second chance at life. I answered no at first because not even a second shot at life could make me change my mind from trying to save Lenne. I would have still done whatever it took to get her out of Bevelle. But then I thought, if I had just been able to find the exit corridor ... If I had hidden in the shadows with her instead of trying to use Vegnagun ... If I had done just _one_ thing differently, ... maybe she could have lived." Shuyin shook his head and looked to Tidus. "I was already lost to any second chances. But somehow, from the part of my soul that wished for something better, Bahamut was able to find you."

Yuna's eyes widened. "Bahamut ..."

"The fayth placed you in the dream in my place, see?" Shuyin stepped closer to Tidus until his chest touched the tip of Caladbolg.

Tidus could have dispersed the spirit instantly with one thrust of the powerful sword, but he held his hand as steady as he could manage under its weight. He felt very bewildered, ... almost betrayed. "I'm a reincarnation of you? A clone? Mirror image? Polar image? What am I? I don't get it!"

Shuyin remained calm. "You are none of those things. I prefer to think of us as brothers. You are an altered memory of me that transcended time. You are the person that I might have been, had I made different decisions, but you are not me. We are very different individuals, you and I."

"That's so beautiful." Rikku sniffled and lowered her mage wand. "So poetic."

Tidus finally lowered his sword and stared hard at Shuyin. His angry confusion melted into a plea. "What about now? Am I still just a dream?"

"I don't know the answer to that question. I can only tell you about your origins and offer my memories," Shuyin stated. "But, you already have a strong sense of who you are. It would be better for you to make your own memories."

"How can I exist if we sent the fayth and ended their dream?"

"I can't answer that either. I don't know how their magic works. You didn't destroy the fayth; you destroyed the enchantment that Yu Yevon used to bind them to his summoning. I was able to recreate some of that bond myself when they tried to stop me from destroying Spira. And I could command them even better than he did," he boasted lightly.

"You must have a strong spirit, to be able to taint my aeons with hate and madness like that," Yuna noted with a twinge of regret that she had been forced to fight former friends.

"Maybe that's why they chose me as the prototype for him." He gestured lightly to Tidus.

"I'm not that strong," Tidus mumbled under his breath.

"You defeated Sin without the Final Aeon. You killed all of the aeons the fayth had to offer, except the one that would perpetuate the cycle of sacrifice to Yu Yevon. And then, you defeated him to keep him from feeding on any more souls."

"I couldn't have done any of that without the help of my friends," Tidus quickly corrected him.

"Then that means your friends are part of your strength." Shuyin's form struggled for a moment, fading slightly and returning to full view. He was weakening. "It's a strain for me to come into the present world now. My distance from the Farplane all those years that I was unsent makes its call to rest strong. I cannot stay much longer, but I can offer my memories of how we lived before we died, … if you want them."

Yuna, Rikku, and Paine all turned their eyes on Tidus. He had a tough decision to make.

Tidus was quiet for a moment, trying to be alone with his thoughts. Then he lifted his chin to face Shuyin once more. "If I had your memories, I would probably be more like you and less like me."

"A wise choice." Shuyin backed away.

"Shuyin," Yuna spoke to him. "Thank you."

He bowed in acknowledgment of her gratitude and turned to walk away.

"Shuyin," Tidus called out to him.

The ghost turned, flickering between stages of transparency as his pyreflies began to separate and float away.

"By any chance, ... were you a _good_ blitzer?" Tidus asked feeling a small pang of regret that he couldn't identify more with the mysterious spirit.

A slow grin spread across Shuyin's face. "Star shooter for the Zanarkand Abes," he proudly announced. Then, he broke into a sudden, full run toward Tidus.

"Woah, I didn't mean for you to -" Tidus put up his arms prepared to block a tackle, but Shuyin's body passed right through him and burst into an array of pyreflies.

Tidus felt cold and distant, as if he were floating in water. A blitzball came speeding toward him so fast he barely caught it before it slammed into his face. He was in an arena in the middle of a championship tournament, and he was being tackled. He struggled to break free of his attacker's hold and turned to punch him back with such force that his opponent broke right through the cyber-net that held the water of the pool in its spherical shape. Water sprayed into the crowd as his opponent landed on their laps, and Tidus grinned to himself with satisfaction, even if he did fumble the ball. Back in play, the ball shot into the air above the water dome. Tidus swam toward the surface so fast that he broke it like a leaping dolphin. He soared high, arching backwards in one fluid movement to kick the ball, but before he could complete the impossible shot, his upside-down view of the night sky revealed the surprise arrival of warships. Towers erupted in one explosion after another and a huge tidal wave crashed down on the city in a macabre attempt to put out the flames with a flood. Zanarkand began to crumble and wash away right before his eyes, but as he was falling, his only thought was of Lenne. War with Bevelle was inevitable now.

When Tidus came back to his senses, he found himself on the floor surrounded by Yuna, Rikku, and Paine. "Yuna, … we found my sphere," he whispered and touched her hand. "It's Shuyin."

))((

Later that evening, on the rocks of the outskirts of Zanarkand, the party stopped in the same place they stood two years ago before making the final stretch of the journey to get the final aeon to defeat Sin. Tidus had not said much after his encounter with Shuyin, but when Paine offered to call the ship to pick them up, he declined saying he wanted this night to be no different from the others - staying on the road until nightfall. Yuna set up a campfire with Rikku and Paine, but Tidus moved a short distance away to gaze at the orange-streaked sky behind the black-silhouetted ruins. He didn't get the answers he was hoping for, and yet he was given so much more he didn't expect.

As he stood overlooking the flooded and crushed remains of the lost city, his mind could see the tragic events happening all over again - first from Shuyin's memories of warships, then from his own memories of Sin. He had witnessed the same complete and utter destruction of hundreds of thousands of souls that night. He had once lived a real life, ... as Shuyin. But he wasn't actually created until after Shuyin died. He was a memory from the light part of Shuyin's soul. But that still didn't answer the question of how he managed to come back, or whether he could stay.

He could hear Yuna's footsteps as she left the campfire and climbed the rocks of the ruins to stand behind him. "It's the fayth," he spoke, breaking his silence. "My thoughts were scattered in pieces, but they collected them again to make my form." He stretched his arms over his head, trying to sound upbeat about it for her. "Probably. Something like that."

Yuna's eyes turned from him to the sunset as she considered the possibility.

Tidus looked down at his hands. "But, ... maybe I'm still only dreamed."

Yuna's expression shifted to one of worry. "Then, you'll disappear again someday?"

Tromell and Shuyin had both commented on his strong sense of identity. Maybe it had nothing to do with the dream. Maybe his thoughts and feelings were enough for the fayth to make him real this time. Sighing in defiance of his frustration, he turned around to make an announcement. "If I'm with you, and you're with me, and we take care of each other, then I'll be okay." He gave her a confident smile and turned back to face the sunset.

Yuna was surprised to see that playful expression again and stepped forward to wrap her arms around his waist from behind, leaning her cheek against his back. "Did the fayth really say that?"

He put his hands over hers. "Just now thought it up," he quipped with a sly smirk.

His flippant response on such a serious train of thought made her laugh. As he laughed with her however, she gave his back a shove.

"_A-a-uwah_!" Tidus plunged into the water not too far below them. He took a moment to brace himself against the ice-cold sensation - very different from the warm oceans of Besaid - then he stood and wiped at the water that had gone up his nose. "I said it's important to take care of me!" he complained.

"Didn't disappear, did you?" she returned with a coy smile.

Tidus looked at his hands once more. He had been able to sleep through the night, fight fiends, heal after an injury, and eat until he was stuffed. If he had not disappeared through any of that, then maybe it didn't matter whether he was real or not, as long as whatever brought him back didn't mean trouble for everyone else. Maybe he had been going about this all wrong. Instead of trying to find out more about his own status, maybe he should be trying to find out the status of the dream. "_Unh_!" He held his hands up to her as proof that she was right, ... and as a ploy for her to help him out of the water.

Yuna giggled at him as he gave up and sloshed through the waist high water back onto the embankment. Then, she hopped down from the rocks to join him.

Tidus approached the campfire, dripping wet and shivering.

Rikku snickered behind her hand. "Hey, you're wet."

"You think?" he answered.

Paine raised an eyebrow and waited for what she knew he was going to say next.

"Okay, _now_ I'm ready to go back to the ship," he announced with a chill.

"If that's all it took to change his mind, I wish I'd thought of that," Paine commented to Yuna and stood to put out the fire.


	10. Chapter 10: The Dream

Chapter 10: The Dream

"Okay, people, remember to stick to the plan," Brother instructed as he stepped onto the lift in the temple of Bevelle. "We all go down to the pumpy-pump thing and see if we can find out what it is."

"Right!" Rikku seconded him.

"Then we go down into the lower dungeons to see where it connects with the Farplane hole."

"Right!"

"Once we get there, _you_ stay put since we don't know what kind of funky things it might do to you." He poked a finger into Tidus's chest for emphasis.

Tidus slightly rolled his eyes, but nodded in agreement. After what happened when he visited the Farplane portal, he decided it wasn't worth the risk to test his susceptibility again.

"I can't hear you." Brother put a hand to his ear.

"All right, okay?" Tidus would cooperate this time without argument.

Yuna wagged a finger at him to remind him to stick to it.

"Then," Brother continued, "we see if we can find what's-his-face in the Abyss to ask about the dream. And if he can't explain anything, then we start taking things apart!"

"Right!" Rikku pounded a fist into her hand. "We'll get to the bottom of this one way or another."

"Don't you mean the _core_ of it?" Shinra shifted the heavy bag of tools on his shoulder.

"I'm ready when you are." Buddy patted his own large bag of tools.

It took the lift two trips to take everyone from the Gullwings crew down to the lower level.

"Looks like the inside of an ancient computer chip," Buddy commented upon seeing the underground up close for the first time.

"There's more," Shinra promised, having come down here once before to set up the com sphere and temporary teleporter to the Abyss. The boy jogged away, fearless of the machina that Yuna and company had previously taken down upon their first entrance into the forbidden zone.

Everyone else followed in his footsteps, up and around the circuit-like trail of blinking lights to get to the secondary lift that would take them to another hidden area. Inside that area, they passed by the "pumpy-pump thing" that had first drawn their attention to the strange fact that everything underground seemed to be mechanized.

"Is this it?" Buddy asked.

"Part of it," Yuna answered. "There's no telling how extensive it is."

"It's a pump of some kind," Brother announced.

"Well, I could have told you that." Rikku placed her hands on her hips.

"No, I'm serious. It's a pump - like a valve that regulates the flow of the engine fuel."

Yuna was puzzled. "You mean, … it's like a heart?"

"A humongously sized heart." Buddy set down his bag and removed a pair of binoculars to try to follow the cables to and from the device. "Are you recording this?" he asked of Shinra.

"Of course." The boy had already hooked up his equipment to a memory sphere, but then passed it to Paine. He picked up another instrument and waddled to one of the walls of the chamber to search for some kind of circuit panel. When he found one, he had to pry off the rusty cover to study the pathways and wiring underneath. Within a few minutes, the boy genius had tapped into some of the clear strands that pulsed with electrical current and was consulting the output on his instrument. "The pressure is irregular. It's incredibly old. Whatever it is, maintenance is in order, or it might not last much longer."

"What do you think it does?" Yuna asked.

"Can't tell yet." Buddy squinted up into the rafters. "We need more information."

"Can I take a look?" Tidus held out his hand for the binoculars.

"Knock yourself out." Buddy placed them in his hand. "I'm going to move on into the next chamber. It looks like the incoming cables come from there." He picked up his bags and followed the ledge into the next area.

Shinra disconnected his equipment as soon as he had taken enough of an analysis and hurried after him. The rest of the party slowly followed, but Tidus lagged behind, gazing through the scopes at the circuited ceiling and all the connecting cables. Slowly, he walked forward, still following the cables because, as Buddy suggested, they did lead into the next chamber. "What kind of power sour-?"

"Excuse you." Rikku side-stepped after Tidus bumped into her.

"Eh, sorry about that," he half-heartedly apologized, as he continued to search the ceiling.

"See anything interesting?" she asked.

He could see only some of the details in the enormous dome. Thick coils of power lines in the shell hung limp and useless, as if cut. Other lines continued to pulse with light. The mechanism that turned and pumped in the center of the previous chamber could still be heard pounding, clinking, and hissing as it methodically sustained whatever task it was supposed to be doing. "It's so big!"

"There's more," Shinra promised again as he set up his system once more to record and run tests.

Paine, taking on her old job as recorder, moved to a place where the memory sphere could see everything that the boy was doing. She zoomed in on the recording he was getting, then she zoomed back out to take in the structure of the entire chamber. When she lowered the sphere, she decided to get a wide group shot, ... just because. Her new friends, she realized, were just as valuable to her as her old ones.

Tidus, remembering some of the fun he had the last time he held a pair of binoculars, lowered his gaze to the back of Rikku's head, … then her back, … then her butt. "Hmm …" He turned the binoculars to Yuna's backside and smiled, until the binoculars were jerked out of his hands.

Paine quirked a brow and passed the binoculars to Buddy once more. "It's been a long two years for you, hasn't it?"

Tidus scratched the back of his head and tried to not look guilty. "Heh."

"Eh?" Yuna turned to face them, thinking they were talking to her.

"He's a boy trapped in a man's body, Yuna," Paine offered a vague explanation and lifted the memory sphere to record his guilt after catching him in the act.

Rikku and Yuna blinked at Paine, and then Tidus, wondering what she meant by that. Tidus shrugged as if he had no clue.

Shinra finished his observations and packed up his equipment again. "The power source is definitely coming from below - where the core of the Farplane is. If my earlier readings were correct, there's enough energy down there to last several lifetimes. It must be what powered Vegnagun. And if we could find a way to harness it, we could -"

"_Really_ soup-up the engine in the Celsius!" Brother became excited at the thought and started making engine rumbling noises, while revving imaginary handle bars.

Paine lowered the memory sphere and gave him the same deadpan expression she had given Tidus for his use of the binoculars.

When he finished gathering information here, Shinra repacked his gear and ran to the edge of the balcony. He looked over the short wall barrier to the towers way below. They guarded the giant combination lock that had sealed the dungeons of Bevelle. There was no path or lift leading down to it. Everyone else came near to where he stood to look down from their dizzying distance at the mechanism below.

"We have to go in there?" Brother tried not to sound too nervous.

"It's already been unlocked," Shinra answered.

"Well, what are we waiting for then?" Tidus hopped over the edge onto a long, thick chain - the only connection between here and there - and surfed down the links, as if they were a mere water slide.

Brother gasped and slapped his hands to his head, but Shinra hopped onto the chain behind Tidus, and then everyone else followed suit. Being the only one left, Brother forced himself to take the leap, but yelled his dislike of the ride every bumpy inch of the way. When he reached the bottom, he knelt and kissed the wide, stable concrete beneath his feet. Yuna led from there to a place on the lock's outer ring where she could hop down onto the first ledge below it, then the second, and finally the third. Then, she ran into the tunnel beyond it and turned to wait for the rest of her crew.

"Be careful in these tunnels." Paine put away the memory sphere and drew her warrior sword. "They were full of fiends the last time we came through. Stick together to avoid getting lost and move as quickly as you can. The longer that you spend contemplating which way to go, the more fiends you will attract." She hopped down the tiered ledges of the lock behind Yuna, and everyone else in the group followed suit.

Once they were all together, they raced down the first hall of the dungeon tunnels, looking for an opening to the next level. They were forced to stop when they came to their first intersection. Each passage looked exactly the same, and all of them turned in different directions.

"Which way?" Tidus asked.

"Was it this way?" Rikku pointed in the direction she thought she remembered taking first.

"There were supply chests that way, but that's not what we came for." Yuna turned around in her place and tried hard to remember which path led where. "We need to go directly to the center."

"That would be easy if there _was_ a direct way to the center." Paine's memory of their former wanderings were more filled with the fiends they kept running into, rather than the correct path out of there.

"Oh, why does this place have to be so complicated!" Rikku stamped her foot in frustration. "That way!" She changed her mind and pointed down a different corridor.

With no better lead to follow, everyone ran down the corridor that Rikku picked. Instead of finding the center, however, they found a cluster of liches and imps filling the next intersection.

"Rikku!" Paine loudly complained and readied her sword.

"Stop yelling at me; it confuses me, okay?" She steadied her double daggers. "Uhhh, … that way!" She pointed to the opening on the far right.

"Are you sure?" Paine had her doubts.

"No." Rikku whimpered as the fiends encircled them. "Oh, why did we have to forget to bring our charm?"

"Anyplace is better than here. Go ahead and make a break for it with the equipment," Tidus told Buddy and Shinra. "Paine, Rikku, Brother - you open a path for them. Yuna and I can handle what's left so you're not hit from behind." He glanced at her to be sure he wasn't speaking out of turn for her, but she gave a firm nod and switched to her white mage sphere. She drew upon her magic to summon a protective shield over her friends who were about to try to break through the demon circle.

"I am the leader! I give the orders around here!" Brother protested.

Tidus scowled, daring him to contradict him at a time like this.

"And I was just going to say that it was a good plan."

Tidus was stunned to finally have Brother on his side.

Paine gave a war cry and ran straight for the smallest imp, her powerful sword slicing it in half until it was nothing but a glowing swirl of pyreflies. Another tried to block her, but she cut it down with equal speed.

"This way!" Rikku cut in front of Shinra and sliced twice toward the imp that tried to block their path. Then, she dodged and grabbed his hand to pull him safely through the fight into the opposite corridor.

Buddy raced after them, while Paine finished off the imp that Rikku had hit. She also turned and took a slice at a lich that was reaching its long, skeletal arms for them, before running after them. That left Brother to raise a large gun point-blank to the monster and fire. The lich finally dispersed in a whirl of pyreflies, and the remaining fiends gave up on the escaping party to turn their attention to the two left behind.

Yuna summoned a bladed staff and cast another protective shell around herself and Tidus. "Take out as many of them as you can. I'll restore you."

Tidus looked at the sword in his hand. Caladbolg, "the one which consumes all", was more than capable of taking a lich down quickly, but there was more than one lich. If he didn't take them down quickly enough, they could slip past him to Yuna. Currently equipped with only protection and cure spells, she was as vulnerable now as she was two years ago with no fighting skills. Tidus sheathed his most powerful sword and switched his grid from his dark knight armor down to his guardian sphere for more agility. In spite of the fact that he was outnumbered four to one by creatures that could kill with a mere touch, he grinned at her. "This is just like old times. All we need now is an aeon to summon."

Yuna's brows rose in surprise and gave him a smile with a nervous laugh in return. "You're used to fighting with other guardians. Can you really handle something like this on your own?"

"Guess there's only one way to find out." Tidus raised Brotherhood in his right hand and simultaneously lit the blade with live electricity with his left, creating an even more deadly bite than the sword itself would naturally give. Then, he ran toward the remaining fiends slashing left and right with as much speed as he could muster, always aiming for the ones that tried to circle behind him toward Yuna, first. The cold, bony hands of death clawed and grabbed at him from all sides, but as cuts penetrated and withered his skin, he felt them knit back together again. Staying a safe distance away, Yuna was sustaining him with a continual recitation of her healing spells. Tidus kept slashing, sending sparks and arcs of lightning in different directions, until the last lich fell before him. He was breathless and bore long, pale blue gashes on his chest and arms, but he had survived it.

Yuna ran to his side and pulled out a small bottle of blue liquid. "We have to hurry! We can't lose the others!" She applied the liquid lightly to the worst wounds to conserve what was left of her magical energy. Planting a quick congratulatory kiss on his cheek, she put away the healing potion and pulled him to his feet. They ran down the hall until she came to a sudden stop and grabbed Tidus's arm to hold him still, as well.

"Why are we -?"

"Ssh! Listen ..."

Tidus waited silently, but heard nothing.

"I've seen these halls in the nightmare Lenne showed me. She and Shuyin were chased by Bevelle guards armed with guns, and their footsteps echoed loudly through here."

_ Footsteps, ... Those same thundering footsteps ..._ Tidus remembered Shuyin's words and listened again.

"They went that way," Yuna decided and pulled him forward again. Following the echo of her friends' footsteps, she was able to stay oriented through the maze to meet the rest of the crew on the ledge of the platform that encircled the Farplane. "Well, here it is," she breathlessly announced, pleased with her successful strategy. But then she faced Tidus with a measure of concern.

He knew why. His expression changed from that of a determined warrior to a defeated child. "And ... I'm staying right here," he reluctantly assured her, backing away from the ledge. This was it - his last chance to find out his truth. If this failed, he had no other place to seek answers. Tidus made up his mind that he wouldn't waste it. "If he's down there, don't worry about asking if I'm real, or not. Ask him if the fayth still dream. Find out as much as you can about that. That's more important, I think. But if there's time for one more question, ... I'd just kind of like to know how old I am now, ... okay?"

Yuna smiled at his simple, selfless request. "We won't be long."

He nodded in acceptance of what he could not change. "Be careful."

She turned and walked toward the edge. "Ready, Gullwings?"

"Ready!" they all answered. Brother flapped his arms like wings and danced with Rikku to psyche themselves up for the plunge.

Yuna stood on the edge of the chasm, took one more look over her shoulder at Tidus, then leaped.

Tidus waited until every other member of the Celsius crew had jumped into the chasm before he ran to the edge and looked down into the depths. He saw no trace of them. A cold sweat formed on his brow, and it wasn't from running the maze-like halls and fighting fiends. All alone above the Farplane, he made himself back away and sit in the center of the platform, as far from the edge as possible. Resting his forehead on his knees and dropping Brotherhood to the floor beside him, all he could do now was wait.

))((

In the vortex of the chasms beneath each of the temples, the winding roads all led to one place - the Abyss of the Farplane - the magical glen where the spirits of the dead came to rest. Yuna knew this because she had been here before already. The misty, flowered meadow under frothing waterfalls formed a mysterious, magical buffer against time and space that no one on Spira fully understood. Buddy, Brother, and Shinra looked around, not knowing which to be in awe at more - the Farplane itself, or the technology that contained it. Yuna stood and looked around for something more.

"The heart of the Farplane is beyond that portal," Rikku told Shinra, pointing to a swirling, red cloud that strongly resembled the iris of a very large eye. "There's more circuitry in there, along with what's left of Vegnagun."

"How could a place like this exist in the middle of all that machina?" Buddy asked, referring to the mechanical dome from which they had come.

"Bahamut?" Yuna stepped forward, looking around with hope. "Bahamut, if you can hear me, please come talk to me. It's very important."

Pyreflies a short distance from her coalesced to take a transparent form before them. Within seconds, the mysterious, purple-hooded fayth levitated quietly before her once more. The boy immediately observed that Tidus was not among them. "He did not come."

"He chose to remain above. We were afraid the Farplane might pull him away."

"But he has questions," he guessed the reason for their visit.

"Yes. He wants to know if the fayth still dream."

"The fayth stopped dreaming when Yu Yevon was destroyed. Thanks to you, we can rest now."

"Then, ... how did he come back?"

"He is a neo-genesis - the first of his kind."

As everyone in their group gathered around her, Yuna crouched to speak to the boy at his eye-level. "I don't understand."

The boy's spirit was quiet for a moment. There was no easy way to explain this.


	11. Chapter 11: Reason to Be

Chapter 11: Reason to Be

Bahamut pondered how to explain Tidus to Yuna. The answer was broad and full of paradox that she might not misunderstand. "You will tell him what I say?"

"Yes," she quietly answered. "He so badly wants to know. We all do."

"Then, he is ready to know. Listen carefully and try to help him understand. This is the way it had to be."

Yuna nodded and braced herself for ... she didn't know what.

Bahamut held his chin at just enough of a level to hide his eyes from view as he related his confession. "The aeons were not enough to help the survivors of the Machina War truly defeat Sin. This was Lady Yunalesca's plan from the beginning, that the Final Aeon would defeat Sin, only to take its place as the next one. The dead could only look on in despair, unable to affect change in the physical world because of their rest. And the spirits who could not find rest were too lost in their own pain. The fayth could not fight Yu Yevon because he trapped our souls in his summoning spell. But the fayth decided to see if one of the illusions from the dream would be strong enough to do it. It was a plan to reflect a part of Yevon's own magic back at him, in hopes that the illusion would be able to cast off the possession of the Final Aeon and then defeat Yu Yevon himself. At the very least, a real life would not be wasted if the illusion did not survive. At least, ... that was the plan." The small boy's spirit floated silently for a moment, no trace of emotion on his half-hidden face.

"Our first choice was Jecht. As world-famous athlete, he was physically capable of becoming a strong warrior, but more than that, he had determination and courage. We needed someone who would not give up until he had won. We sent him to your father, Lord Braska, as a guardian for his pilgrimage. Jecht befriended Braska and the other guardian, Auron. When the time came for Braska to chose which of his guardians he would sacrifice to become his Final Aeon, Jecht volunteered because he didn't think he could ever return home. We thought all was going according to plan. He did defeat Sin, but then he, too, fell victim to Yu Yevon's possession. As the new Sin, he returned to punish the rest of Spira once again for attacking Zanarkand, demanding more sacrifice to feed Yevon's revenge and power, as all the other Sins had before him. His difference, though, was that Jecht retained his awareness of who he was and what he was doing. He hated being helpless to stop his destruction, and he hated Yu Yevon, so he was willing to help us try again. We realized we needed something more - something that Yu Yevon wouldn't expect." The small fayth paused a moment after telling Jecht's story. "Auron's spirit, having made a promise to his friend, searched for Jecht's son. But Jecht's son had died almost a thousand years prior. Jecht just never knew because he had died when the boy was a child. I assume you know the story of how Shuyin died, since you are the one who was finally able to send his spirit to his rest, Lady Yuna."

Yuna blinked and forced herself to nod in agreement. _Shuyin_ was Jecht's son. The concept was difficult to accept, having believed all this time that Sir Jecht was Tidus's father. "I didn't send Shuyin. He left voluntarily, ... with Lenne."

Bahamut became silent again as he hovered in the air before her. His hooded face continued to show no trace of emotion, but Yuna could sense the spirit's momentary sadness.

She considered what she had learned from talking to Shuyin's spirit. "He was your friend, wasn't he."

The boy nodded.

"And yet, ... he used you to attack the temples."

The boy nodded again.

"You must feel very betrayed." She quietly sympathized. "I think, he regrets having done that now."

"He does." The young fayth lifted his chin ever so slightly. "I'm still glad that my sister chose to be with him. He was fun, sincere, and loyal. He had his father's courage and determination, even if his jokes were corny and he got a little cocky sometimes. But when Lenne died, Shuyin's soul changed. He became lost to us because he refused to let go and leave his despair behind. That's how great his loyalty was to her. But we found the part of his soul that desperately wanted a second chance, and we fashioned an illusion around it. The neo-genesis was unique. He was an illusion created from memories, but he shared a real soul. He came from the past into the present, ... like the way we see a star's light only after it has traveled many years to reach us."

"Neo-genesis ..." Yuna tried to understand, so that she could explain it to him when she returned.

"As we sent Jecht to your father, we sent his son's neo-genesis to you. Auron's spirit watched over him until the time was right that he and Jecht could pull him from the dream into reality. The neo-genesis was to be your guardian for a short time - long enough to help you defeat Sin and banish Yu Yevon from Spira forever." Bahamut's boyish face saddened again. "Because of our earlier failure, he had to kill his own father. But he is the only one who could have done this. Do you see? It was the only way to free Jecht, us, and all of Spira from Yu Yevon's control."

Yuna remembered Tidus's freely flowing tears as he held his defeated father in his arms, after finishing his tragic deed. His friends had helped him win the battle, but afterwards, they all felt his sadness more than their victory. Even now, thinking about it made her blink back tears. She had cried many tears that day, having to fight her faithful aeons and send them, and her faithful guardians, away - first Auron, then _him_. Yuna buried her face in her hands, but she tried to keep silent and listen beyond the burning emotion that was returning with the memories.

"When the fayth were sent, he had no choice but to fade with us because he was from the dream. But he could not be immediately dispersed with the rest of the dream's illusions. He was not dead, so his thoughts could not rest. He preferred to continue being your guardian. We didn't know what to do with him." The boy shrugged his shoulders in dismay.

Yuna gave a light laugh and wiped away a tear.

"We thought maybe we could use him to help Shuyin find his peace, but the dream magic we used to make him had developed a consciousness of its own. So, when Shuyin finally did return to us, he wanted to give his neo-genesis a second chance with you, ... in return for what you gave to him."

"Lenne?" Yuna guessed.

"More than Lenne - forgiveness." The child-spirit paused. "We weren't sure it would work, since spirit magic is powerless in your world without being bonded to it, but since you seemed to miss each other so much, we summoned him one more time. His own desire to live is what sustains him now."

Yuna sniffled and clasped her fingers at her chin. "Can he stay? ... Please?" she quietly requested.

"We can't promise he'll never fade away; but if he uses common sense and stays out of trouble, he should be able to live in your world for a very long time. He's as real as he can be, considering his circumstances. Just make sure he does not misunderstand. It was the way it had to be."

"I think he has learned to accept that."

"Lady Yuna, you have done so much for Spira. It was the least we could do to return your guardian to you. Besides, he was beginning to drive us crazy."

Yuna laughed lightly and brushed again at the moisture that began to form on her lashes. "Then, his appearance doesn't mean trouble for Spira?"

"Trouble for you maybe, but not for Spira." The fayth finally allowed himself a hint of a smile.

Yuna stood and turned to her friends with a smile she was unable to contain. Everyone grinned, sharing her happiness. Rikku, who had also been moved to tears at the memories, stepped forward to hug her. "He can stay with us, Yunie! He can really stay!"

But looking at her friends, and their equipment, reminded Yuna of the other reason they had come here. She decided to see if the fayth could help with that, too. "Bahamut, would you happen to know what all this machina down here is for?"

"It's the Heart of the ship."

Everyone standing before the boy's spirit blinked in bewilderment.

"Ship?" Brother asked, confused. "What ship?"

"Spira. She's a ship."

"Like an airship?" Buddy asked, stunned.

"A space ship." Bahamut's body began to thin slightly. No longer bonded to life, like any other sent spirit, he was needing to return to his rest, but it seemed he had one more thing he needed to explain. "A long time ago, a far away world was looking for inhabitable planets to colonize as their population expanded and their resources dwindled. They could not find any worlds suitable to their needs, so they decided to build one. Spira was the first colony world to successfully maintain life, partly because of the way Zanarkand intermingled with non-human races and learned how to summon a magical dimension into the heart of the ship. It brought the ship to life, in a sense. The Founders were not happy about that, though - thought it was too dangerous to be exploring such high powered magic. They are the ones that gave the order for Bevelle to attack Zanarkand because they feared it was going too far. Yu Yevon is the one that convinced Spira to flee from the Founders to prevent an even greater retaliation from them. Spira's freedom was perhaps the only good thing to come out of the Machina War, but we've been fighting to be free of Yu Yevon ever since."

"What kind of fuel could keep a ship running for a thousand years?" Buddy asked, as he looked around at the overhead circuitry with new awareness.

"The Farplane," Shinra answered. "Remember the tests we did before allowing the Gullwings to come down here to find Vegnagun? All that energy to power many cities ..."

"The Farplane breathes life into Spira." The spirit-boy thinned a little more. "As long as life exits on Spira, the Farplane will absorb the cast-off energy of its spirits and use it to sustain the ship. You could say that Spira is the real dream, since she is the one who ultimately holds our collective memories."

"Well, dream energy might endlessly recycle, but the part of the ship that is machina is falling apart," Buddy reported. "The pump is irregular, and circuits are failing. If you ask me, corrosion is our biggest enemy now."

"She hasn't had maintenance in over a thousand years." Bahamut shrugged and shook his head. "What did you expect?"

"Why doesn't anyone else know about this?" Rikku asked.

"Spheres containing the knowledge of the Founders that weren't destroyed in the Machina War were hoarded and destroyed by Yu Yevon - one of many ways he was able to keep the people of Spira under his control. That's why surviving spheres are precious."

"I don't suppose, you'd be able to tell us where a few of these precious spheres are, would you?" Brother was almost able to taste the sweet fortune that they could make, if they could retrieve such a treasure.

The boy's spirit shook his head and defiantly folded his arms. "Fat chance."

"Oh come on! We need some kind of reward for fixing such a big machina. It's a whole planet we're talking about!"

"Just keep looking. If you keep finding spheres and piecing together their individual stories, you will soon have a great library of knowledge. And that is a reward that would be truly priceless."

"What world did Spira come from, then?" Paine tilted her chin to one side in curiosity.

Bahamut's body began to swirl with pyreflies as he disappeared. "Earth."

"Wait!" Yuna begged of the bright cloud of light within the floating pyreflies. "I forgot to ask one more thing. Please, ... He would like to know how old he is now."

The fayth's voice continued to answer her, though his light was all that remained. "The neo-genesis was created about three years ago, just in time for the reappearance of Sin."

Rikku giggled. "He's three?"

"Well, that would explain a lot." Pain gave Yuna and Rikku a glance of wry amusement.

"But, technically, his soul is a thousand-year work in progress. So, we'll split the difference and say he's the same age as when he had to leave you - seventeen." The boy's voice trailed away.

Yuna smiled from deep within her heart. "Thank you, my friend. ... Rest in peace," she whispered to the departed spirit.

))((

A few days later, on the island of Besaid, Brother and Tidus were in the engine room of the Celsius working on the hover bike he had crashed. Brother put his hands to his head and shook it in disgust. "No, no, no! You can't put that part there! It goes here! You will never be able to help us repair Spira's heart if you can't tell the difference between a gyroscepter circuit and a spring-fusion conductor!"

Tidus's frustration turned into anger. "Well, you didn't tell me what a ... spring-gyro-fusion-thingy is!" He cast his wrench aside before standing up and walking down the open hatch out of the engine room in a huff.

A moment later, the door from the lift opened and Yuna came down the stairs bearing a two tall drinks decorated with tropical flowers. "Rikku and I have been experimenting with fruit from the island. Would you like to try one of the drinks we made?" Yuna cheerfully handed him one of the cups she carried.

"Oh, thank you! Yuna is an angel to think of such things on a hot and humid day like this." He gratefully accepted and guzzled down the drink to quench his thirst.

"It's just a small way to thank my brotherly bulldog for protecting me so well." She planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

Brother's tattooed face flushed a slight pink, and he waved her away in embarrassment. "It was nothing, really. At least, he will take good care of you, now that he knows he will have to answer to me, if he doesn't."

Yuna smiled in amusement at her cousin's assessment of his previous conflict with Tidus. "How's the repair of the hover bike going?"

Brother snorted in annoyance. "You were right. He's got the mechanical talent of a monkey! He will never be able to help us fix Spira's inner core. He is useless to us except for picking up trash and cleaning the bathrooms."

Yuna tried not to laugh. "Oh, I don't know. He's pretty good with a sword and magic. He'll need that for hunting spheres."

"Are you saying he's better than me at hunting spheres?" Brother looked over his shoulder.

"No, no. You are ... differently gifted." She smiled sweetly at him.

"Oh." He had never thought of it that way before, but he liked the way it sounded.

"As for the inner core, maybe it would be better to ask for the help of the Machine Faction. It's a big job to repair such a big ship. Cid contacted Gippal, and he's on his way to help Shinra with his analysis of the core's design."

Brother set down his cup and looked up at her, aghast at her news. "What'd he do that for? We can handle it ourselves!"

"Well, ... leading the Gullwings is a big job, too. It's very important that we continue to find as many spheres as we can. We need the help of our captain to do that."

Brother folded his arms at his chest and nodded in approval. "Well, when you put it that way ..."

Yuna smiled and picked up the spent cup. Then, she walked down the ramp in search of Tidus. He was right where she suspected he would be - in the deeper water taking out his frustrations on a blitz ball by seeing how many sustained air-volleys he could keep going. After setting the empty cup in the corner of the ramp, she removed the sleeves of her thief sphere attire and folded them nearby to keep them dry. In her bikini top and skort, she stepped into the cool, shallow tide, and waded up to her knees in the water. Putting her fingers to her lips, she whistled to get his attention and held up the surprise drink with a light shake.

In response to her call, he swam toward her until he could tuck the ball under his arm and walk the rest of the way to her side. "Thanks. What is it?" He accepted the cup, examined it skeptically, and then took a cautious sip.

She laughed at how different his response was to Brother's. "It's a fruit drink. It won't poison you; I promise."

"I saw Rikku making drinks behind the bar when I took a break from the engine room. I've seen her mix alchemy potions; don't tell me it won't poison me." He liked the concoction, though, and ended up drinking down the rest of the icy treat rather quickly. "Ah -!" He winced. "Brain freeze."

"I take it your bike repair lessons didn't go so well?"

"Not exactly," he grumbled.

"Well, Cid's talking to Gippal right now about the Machine Faction helping out with the repairs on Spira's Heart. So, while Rikku and _I _were making drinks, I contacted Kimahri and updated him on what we found out, and then I contacted Tromell, Nooj, and Baralai to update them as well. They think it would be a good idea to use any future spheres that we find to make a big library over the ruins of Zanarkand, like Bahamut suggested. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but even Isaaru and Kimahri thought it was a fitting way to honor the memory of what happened there. I told them I wanted to check with you first."

"Me?"

"You're the only real Zanarkand resident left who can voice an opinion about it."

Tidus laughed lightly at the irony of the word. "It's okay with me." He shrugged. "It's not like the blitz stadium works anymore, anyway." He finished the last of the drink, giving her a sly grin.

She chuckled lightly and bumped the ball out of his grip. "What a shameless thing to say. That's a sacred place for everyone else on Spira."

"Oh, so first I'm the only real resident of the place, but now I'm completely out of touch with reality because I only think I used to live there." He drew back in mock offense. "Get your act together, crazy woman. Either I'm really here, or you're a little touched in the head for thinking you see me." He set the empty cup in the sand and waded further into the water to reclaim the ball.

"Who's crazy? I already explained to you that you're really here." Yuna smiled to herself with a mischievous expression and sneaked behind him to give him a surprise push.

Having heard her footsteps in the water, however, Tidus anticipated her action and easily dodged. What he didn't anticipate was the broken shell that his foot landed on. He hopped back with a wince just as a wave rolled forward and pushed him back into the water with a splash. Sitting in clear, blue water up to his chest, he squinted up at her as she laughed at him. It felt good to be alive - at least, as alive as a neo-genesis could be. Ignoring the ball, he sprang up out of the water and plowed into her, hefting her onto his shoulder, as he had at the blitzball game, to carry her further into the water. "That's twice you've done that to me now, on top of all the other abuses. I think you need to see how it feels."

Yuna cried out and laughed, gripping the back of shirt and hooking an arm around his neck to avoid being dropped into the ocean.

"Hey! _Goldilocks_!" Wakka called as he strode up the beach toward them. "When you're done being a kind and loving gentleman to your girlfriend there, how about giving me a hand up here at the village with a few things!"

Tidus stopped swinging Yuna over the water and set her down gently on her feet. "What is it with everyone calling me that? Is there a reason for it, or have you people never seen blond hair before?"

Yuna swept a strand of thin, brown hair behind her ear that the breeze lifted into her eyes. "You've never heard the story of _Goldilocks and the Three Bears_?" Realization hit her. "If you can't remember Shuyin's past, you probably can't remember his childhood either."

"She's a little girl in a children's story, ya?" Wakka informed him with a chuckle. "And since you're having to rely on a bunch of girls to protect you from fiends ..."

"Very funny." Tidus squinted one eye shut into the sun and patiently wiped the salt water from his arms before wringing out the hem of his Besaid shirt. "You know a smart man would enjoy being surrounded by three women on a long road trip. ... Well, except when they kick him out of the hot spring into the freezing wind and snow."

"Heh." Wakka chuckled. "A smart man would know not to say something like that in front of the _one_ woman who could send him packing."

Tidus looked at Yuna, who lifted her chin and began tapping her fingers on her arm. "He's right, you know. You're pretty vicious now. Do I really want to travel with you any more?" He lightly scratched his chin as if rethinking this decision.

"So, Goldilocks, you going to make yourself useful and help me back at the village? Or you gonna bum around all day on the beach?" Wakka asked again.

"Well, I'm definitely _not_ going to help until you stop calling me that." Tidus squinted into the sun again, as he crossed his arms defiantly and stood his ground.

Wakka got in Tidus's face. "You gonna make me?"

"Seven to nothing, old man."

"Who are you calling old, little girl. I'll sweep the beach with you tonight." Wakka turned and walked away. "I'll put you on diaper patrol, that's what - now that's scary work, right there!" he called as he strode back up the beach toward the road to the village.

"He doesn't realize it yet, but I've got all the time in the world now to whip him back into shape." Tidus gave Yuna a mischievous grin.

Yuna laughed lightly and turned to head back to the airship. "Well, don't hurt him too badly, okay?" She stopped with a small yelp, when her long braid pulled taut behind her. He was holding onto it again.

Tidus grinned and closed the short distance between them, but then his grin faded in slight embarrassment as he toyed lightly with the fluff of hair at the end of her braid. "Will you tell me the story of Goldilocks when I come back?"

Yuna smiled at the child-like innocence of the request. "I have lots of stories I can tell you. In fact, I should make spheres of all the stories I can think of to put in the new library at Zanarkand, so that they don't become lost. Our stories are part of our collective knowledge in a different way. They don't just represent who we are, but also who we hope to be, ... kind of like our dreams."

Tidus liked that explanation. He smiled, kissed her lightly, and then released her braid. Wading back into the deeper water, he picked up the blitzball. "Bonfire tonight, ... on the beach then. Okay?"

"I'll be waiting ... right here," she promised him, as he had promised her when he remained behind on the edge of the Farplane.

"I'd better go see what Wakka wants in the village," he called over his shoulder as he jogged up the white sand on the beach. "I guess I have to be nice to him before I cream him tonight on the beach, so I can coach his _sad_ little team!"

Yuna chuckled lightly to herself and shielded her eyes from the sun to watch him disappear from her view down the road to the village. She dug her toes into the cool, wet sand beneath her feet and felt the pull of the tide wash some of it away, but she was confident this time that he had not really disappeared. He would return to her again and again. "Now it's _our_ story."

))((

Author's Note:

I would like to thank all of you who left reviews during the original version's posting five years ago and those who wrote or left messages during my year's absence from this account. Your support and encouragement reminded me why I enjoyed writing in the first place - to imagine, to explore, to have fun, to entertain. My readers are my inspiration. The best-written story in the world is worth nothing if there are no readers to appreciate it.

If you are new to my Final Fantasy fan-fiction series, thanks for taking the time to check it out. And if you enjoyed this one, "Spira's Sphere" is the sequel, which I will be uploading next.


End file.
